David O'ConnellWarrior
October 28th 2011 03:08
The brutality of mixed martial arts fighting forms the backdrop of Gavin O’Connor’s new film, Warrior (2011), a stirring tale of brothers whose lengthy separation ends with a cathartic squaring off before an audience of millions. As a boy, Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) was a fearsome opponent in the ring and seemingly headed for superstardom when the family unit dissolved, leaving him with his mother, whilst his alcoholic father Paddy (Nick Nolte) became the chief provider for his brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton).
Whilst Tommy’s life drifted into limbo, putting him at the mercy of his mother's whim and eventually into the armed forces, Brendan’s own journey assumed a far more conventional look with a family, kids and job as a high school teacher. But now Brendan’s in dire financial straits. On the verge of losing his home, he decides to remake his body as a battering ram as he steps into the ring for relatively small bickies.
Casting a romanticist’s eye on a national tournament that is the pinnacle of mixed martial arts each year and comes with a lucrative purse attached, he spies a way free of his debts. At the same time, Tommy has strayed back into town and onto his father’s doorstep looking for a trainer who can ready him for the same tournament without the possibility of stirring up emotional reverberations.
Both men seek pain as a means to an end. For Brendan it seems the only way to supplement his income as a teacher, the only fall-back that makes sense to him, though naturally it horrifies his wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison). For Tommy the necessity bespeaks of a darker hued tumult: fulfilling, at last, the promise of his early days in the ring; appeasing his father even if an unremitting enmity for the man still courses through his veins for his childhood abandonment; there may be a relatable Tyler Durden factor operating too – an individual numbed by experience who can only feel alive by inflicting pain on himself.
There are certain leaps of faith to be made when assessing Warrior; the implausibility of the brothers’ eventual convergence for starters, and the paucity of scenes between them which would not only have shed light on their intrinsic if lapsed connection, but provided a weightier cathartic punch for the enthralling final moments of the film.
What is beyond question is the grim naturalism that informs the majority of the film; a bedrock of hardened need smacking against a brick wall of resentment that, once breached, unleashes all manner of inner torment into the lives of all three Conlon men. O’Connor and his talented cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi have opted for a confronting shooting style that provides washed out colours and genuine immediacy for the fighting sequences; in short, an aesthetic approach that ensures we feel the brunt of every quaking blow delivered in the ring.
For Edgerton, this is the finest performance of his career and hopefully an American breakout. For Hardy, who first left audiences in awe of his talent in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson (2008), this further enhances his growing reputation as an intense, hypnotic performer capable of breathing tension into a scene with a single glowering glance. Both are nearly overshadowed by Nolte however who inflicts painfully deep scrutiny on Paddy, a wilting, wounded father in name only. Through the course of the film, he's forced to confront the demons that have long held sway over his conscience.
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