Packing a wallop

Outstanding performances and fine writing make 'The Fighter' worth cheering

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The title of director David O. Russell’s film is simpleenough — “The Fighter” — but which character it refers to is not so clear. Itwould seem to be Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), the welterweight who’s beenbattling his way through the fight game in the early 1990s. But it could justas easily be his half-brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a former boxerwho seemed to be a champion in the making more than a decade earlier, beforegiving in to drug addiction.

The differences between the two are immediately evident.Micky is composed and focused, dealing with his challenges as calmly andreasonably as possible, while Dicky has the anxious eyes of an animal on therun and the uneasy tone of voice of someone who’s continually trying to thinkup the next lie he’ll tell. When he’s sitting down, his legs constantly wiggle,and when he’s on his feet he moves with the awkward, outwardly confident strideof a crushingly insecure man trying to put on a show for everyone around him.He might as well have “once-promising” tattooed on his forehead.

Vivid personalities and perfectly tuned performances are thehallmarks of this compelling character study, based on a true story. Micky andDicky may be complete opposites, but they’re both under the thumb of amother/manager who uses love as a lethal weapon. Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) is amuch-married wildcat of a woman whose blonde honey-bun hairdo might as well bea crash helmet. She clings to the yellowing scrapbooks documenting Dicky’sglory days as if they might contain magic spells capable of bringing back thegood old days. Even so, Alice is practical enough to know Micky is still herbest shot at returning to the big time, although, at 31, he’s gettingperilously close to being past his prime.

Wahlberg, Bale and Leo superbly showcase the scarypsychological connections between these three, with Dicky and Alice ferventlyavoiding reality and counting on Micky at every turn to shield them from thetruth about themselves. The mutually poisonous tie between Dicky and Alice isparticularly gripping. When she catches him sneaking around a local crackhouse,he knows exactly how to immediately win back her trust: by warbling the BeeGees’ “I Started a Joke” in the voice of an eager-to-please little boy.

When experts advise Micky to dump Dicky as his trainer,Micky recites a defense that’s obviously been drummed into his mind over theyears: “He taught me everything I know. I can’t do it without him. He’s alwaysbeen in my corner.”

Micky’s wake-up call arrives in the form of sharp-eyedCharlene (a no-nonsense, tough-talking Amy Adams, operating in a galaxy far,far away from “Julie and Julia” and “Enchanted”), a bartender who’s had a fewknockdowns herself: Having partied too often in college and lost herscholarship, she knows all too well what it feels like to step onto thedownward spiral. It also takes her very little time to size up Micky’ssituation and to realize that Alice and Dicky are leeches and that Micky istheir blood bank.

In its second act, “The Fighter” develops into a tug-of-war,with Alice employing every possible passive-aggressive trick to hold on toMicky and Charlene urging him to finally acknowledge what he’s known for years.If Alice is the Wicked Witch in this scenario, her seven daughters (most ofwhom have the well-worn look of what a friend used to call “the girls who livein fear of the ‘last call’ lights”) make up her army of Flying Monkeys, hangingaround Alice’s house and waiting fro her commands. They chatter incessantly, dubCharlene an “MTV girl” — their code word for “slut” — and fawn over Dicky, evenas he continues to fall apart.

“The Fighter” includes several boxing matches, which Russellphotographs in the slightly glossy/grainy format of an HBO special. But themost exciting bouts happen outside of the ring, as Charlene takes on Alice andDicky — the verbal free-for-all between Bale and Adams is hilariously nasty —and Micky squares off with himself, struggling to balance his devotion to hisfamily with his desire for a happier future. The going gets rocky, but this isnot “Rocky”: It’s a searing, touching and powerfully played picture of a worldin which the real triumph may be merely surviving and living with your eyesopen.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jamessanford

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