Category Archives: Christian Bale

Movie Review: American Hustle

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Here Comes the Sun(glasses). Image via TotalFilm

From the very beginning, “American Hustle” announces that it is only sort of based on true events.

Fitting, as this is an historical event so complex and bizarre that the whole truth simply could not do it justice. This is where movie truth steps in and offers a helping hand.

“American Hustle” constantly blurs the line between real and fake. In fact, the film opens with Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) giving himself the most passionate combover you’ll ever see. Irv’s life philosophy is to fake it until you make it. He kind of has to, as this is part of his job: Irv is a con man, and a very good one at that.


From there, “American Hustle” is like a much better version of “The Informant!” crossed with “Goodfellas” on crack. Once Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) enters the picture, the film is a manic mix of criss-crossing voiceovers and flashbacks. The two of them try to commit the perfect crime, yet they have trouble doing this, as they are not the perfect couple. That is exactly why it is easy to get attached to these people, but especially Irv, as he does not look like a slick member of the “Ocean’s 11″ crew. Rather, he resembles a schlubby Ron Burgundy knockoff.

The other characters are crime movie misfits as well. Set in 1978 during the ABSCAM Scandal, ambitious FBI Agent Richie Dimaso (Bradley Cooper), who tries to use Irv and Sydney to bring some powerful politicians down, is terrible at his job. Meanwhile, Irv’s manipulative wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is all too aware of her husband’s misdeeds. The only character who actually acts like a real criminal is Sydney. Lesson learned: being able to fake a British accent is a very useful skill in the world of con artistry.

The difference between “American Hustle” and most heist films is that the twists here are actually surprising. Leave it to director David O. Russell, who has also added new spins to the war movie (“Three Kings”), the sports biopic (“The Fighter”), and the romantic comedy (“Silver Linings Playbook”) as well. Nobody manipulates form quite like he can.

While David O. Russell is a uniquely talented director he is also fortunate enough to be working with such interesting material. The characters here are so well fleshed out that they each deserve their own miniseries. Much of O. Russell’s work has been focused around people who call each other out on their BS. “American Hustle” is no exception (consider this elegant and stinging putdown: “she was a master at passive aggressive karate”).

O. Russell and co-writer Eric Singer have come up with some great one-liners here, but the cast truly brings the words to life in a way that, well, actors are supposed to. The fact that “American Hustle” was shut out of the SAG Awards is a travesty that should have ended awards season. Irv is one of the most interesting criminals in any movie in years. As Sydney says when she first meets him, Irv doesn’t look like much, but his confidence takes him a long way. He may be a professional liar, but he just wants people to accept him for who he is. Irv is the most authentic faker out there. There was no better choice to play him than Christian Bale, who lovingly portrays him while hiding behind a big paunch and a garish Star of David necklace.

What I would have done to be invited to this prom

While Bale probably could have done it all on his own (I’d like to think that one day he’ll get his own “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps”), he gets a lot of help from a fantastic array of supporting actors and actresses. While “Silver Linings Playbook” co-stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence don’t get much screen time together, they both get a lot of milage out of playing against type. As Richie, Cooper gives the sense that this guy is thinking at an ADD pace, and this is exactly what stops him from ever doing or saying the right thing. Meanwhile, Lawrence plays Rosalyn who has been holding her rage back for far too long and now she just can’t take it anymore. Perhaps she just watched “Network.” She would rather let a microwave explode than have to listen to her husband tell her how to properly cook something. It’s hard for anybody to get a word in when Rosalyn is around, which plays quite nicely with Lawrence’s outspoken public persona, and is a fitting personality trait for just about every loud New Yorker out there. When they are all together, the ensemble plays like a great band during their finest concert.

Hitchcock once said (and Roger Ebert has also cited in a review) that he enjoyed “playing the audience like a piano.” “American Hustle” enjoys doing the exact same thing, except this time it has dismantled the piano so much that the movie plays itself as much as it plays the audience. The film gets confusing and convoluted beyond belief at times, but then it backtracks and reverses until it ultimately reaches an immensely satisfying finale that asks the viewer to be skeptical of everything that just occurred. Finally, a movie that understands that history is much more interesting when you look at it from a completely different, or even wrong, perspective.

Once it ended, I felt like I could have sat through it once more. “American Hustle” is a smart summer movie wrapped in a December Oscar bait shell. Here is a film about a long con that is also one big long con.

Brain Farts From The Edge

  • I tried to keep as much plot detail out of this review as possible. While much of the story has been altered, the less you know about ABSCAM, the better. It is definitely worth a good Wikipedia search afterwards though.
  • Some things I would talk about after a second viewing/review of this film: Irv and Richie are dopplegangers; the idea of maintaining a certain physical appearance to shield parts of your personality that you don’t like; how people in the 1970s spent way too much time fixing their hair
  • I hope that the film’s likely success doesn’t create a sudden disco nostalgia craze. Please, everybody is still distracted by 90s nostalgia!
  • No matter how brief his appearance was, seeing Robert De Niro play a gangster again delighted me to no end. More of this and less “Last Vegas,” please.
  • Louis C.K. has had minor roles in two of my favorite films of the year from two of my favorite directors. Luckily, he gets a bit more screen time here than he did in “Blue Jasmine.” He plays hilariously timid so perfectly. He doesn’t seem like a typical FBI guy here. But then again, most of the government agents here are very against type.
  • Funny how the criminal is more sympathetic than the FBI agent here. Guys, anti-heroes are the greatest.
  • For some reason, I have expected Kyle Chandler to show up as “Authority Figure #000003″ in just about every Oscar prestige movie now. Couldn’t believe he wasn’t in this at all. Come on, somebody get Coach into comedy!
  • Jeremy Renner pulls off a good Elvis hairdo, and a convincing New Jersey accent to boot.
  • There are few things in this world funnier than the site of Bradley Cooper with curling irons in his hair.
  • A David O. Russell movie without any Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack. AND it’s set in 1978? What is the world coming to??!!
  • Speaking of music, there is a scene where Jennifer Lawrence sings along to a song. I will not spoil it any further, but I will say that it is a moment that her entire career has been leading to.
  • I really want to hear how that ice fishing story actually ends. But you know Richie, whatever sounds best in his head works for him.
  • “Don’t put metal in the science oven” is the most quotable line from any movie that has come out in 2013. Apologies to “I am the captain now” from “Captain Phllips” and “[audible Sandra Bullock yelling sounds]” from “Gravity.”
It’s okay, JLaw. You’re still America’s sweetheart.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

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Welcome back, Batman.

“The Dark Knight Rises” will elicit hours worth of conversation. However, it won’t be about the political subtext ripped from today’s headlines as you might have expected. It will consist of a lot more pondering about where Christopher Nolan went wrong, and how the finale of a masterful saga could be such a dissapointment.


When Christopher Nolan first brought “Batman Begins” to the world, he was introducing a brand new Batman to a new generation of fans. Then, when “The Dark Knight” came out, he had made something unlike any action movie made before it. In “The Dark Knight Rises,” he tends to rely on all of the uninspired tropes that he was once so good at ignoring. 


The final installment of this Batman trilogy has a muddled plot that shines at certain points. It takes place six years after the death of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and the disappearance of the caped avenger, after Batman takes the fall for Dent’s death. Gotham is now in a time of peace. Deprived of his heroic identity, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) spends his days living in isolation in Wayne Manor. During this time, Wayne has become crippled as his family empire crumbles. He hosts parties that he doesn’t attend. He grows a beard and never comes out of his room. While people think that he has turned into Howard Hughes, Wayne actually manages to keep most of his sanity intact.

It’s sad to say, but “The Dark Knight Rises” manages to share the same plot as “MacGruber”: a hero is shunned by society, goes into hiding, can’t get over the loss of his one true love, and is eventually called back into action because he is the only one who can defeat the latest threat to the world. Wayne has refused to move on with his life, which sends his loyal butler Alfred (Michael Caine) packing. What Alfred, as well as Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, neglect is the fact that Batman is Bruce Wayne’s true identity, and not the other way around.

With The Joker and Two-Face out of the picture, the latest threat to Gotham is Bane (Tom Hardy), a psychopath in a mask that makes him look like a prawn from “District 9.” Bane, like a demon emerging from hell, was raised underground where he gained unmatchable strength and a dark view on humanity. Now, Bane raises an army of lower class warriors in the sewers of Gotham, as he prepares to wage war on Gotham’s wealthy, and restore power to the people.

Bane is certainly a frightening looking villain. Too bad he couldn’t actually be one of the most frightening. Bane’s voice had to go through some altering in the editing room to make it more audible. However, his new voice sounds less like Darth Vader and more like Gandalf. A man preaching about the destruction of a city should not sound sagely. In addition to that, some damage is done by providing too much of Bane’s backstory. Besides Ledger’s performance, what made The Joker work so well is that so little was revealed about him. There is not enough mystery surrounding Bane. He should have been elusive, not wimpy. Hardy is a very talented actor (see “Lawless” when it opens in August), but this was not necessarily the best showcase for his talent, especially when all of his facial expressions are masked.

“The Dark Knight Rises” makes a fatal mistake by setting the stakes monumentally high. Among the many new things that it introduces is Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), the newest member of the board of Wayne Enterprises, who helps build a nuclear reactor below Gotham that will give the city clean energy. However, Bane turns it into a bomb, with the intent of blowing Gotham to smithereens. The class warfare powers the film at the beginning, and brings it eerily close to today’s headlines. However, adding in the total destruction of Gotham makes the conflict too big. Recall the two boats in “The Dark Knight.” Every time I watch it, I become deeply invested in which boat could blow up because it is a smaller conflict, and we get to know everybody involved.

On a more positive note, there are a few new characters who add to the story. One of them is John Blake, a young cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It may be partly because Gordon-Levitt can do no wrong in my book. Also, he is an engaging new perspective on the battle for law and order in Gotham and in the end, one move he pulls off very much evokes Marshall Will Kane of “High Noon.” Also introduced is Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman (Anne Hathaway). Catwoman is like a Robin Hood for Gotham’s needy. She is a stealthy thief who only meets her match when she first tries to mess with Bruce Wayne. While a failed “Catwoman” movie was made a few years back, Nolan’s Catwoman could merit her own spinoff.

Unfortunately, like many of the great aspects first set up in “The Dark Knight Rises,” it is eventually ruined by the time the film’s nearly three hour run time comes to a close. Her moment of redemption felt contrived and out of place. Catwoman is constantly straddling the line between hero and villain, as she works mainly for herself as opposed to the greater good, so why not just make her a straight up anti-hero?

The contrived fate of Catwoman pretty much sums up most of the other mistakes made by “The Dark Knight Rises.” I do not want to give away too much, so I will just say that there might as well have been Ewoks dancing around.

As everyone expected, “The Dark Knight Rises” is visually striking, even if the action scenes are clunkier than those from its predecessor. It is also the cinematic equivalent of a lingerer: it spends too much time in places where it could have gotten itself out of much quicker. Bruce spends an awful lot of time trying to escape a hole in the ground. Montages were invented for a reason, and could have been put to good use here.

The weaknesses of “The Dark Knight Rises” expose Nolan’s weaknesses as a filmmaker, which were often visible in his other works but always redeemed by his strengths. For example, his characters have a habit of explaining too much when they could just let their actions do all of the talking for them. This was the biggest flaw in “Inception,” yet the striking visuals and action sequences covered up for it. In “The Dark Knight,” it worked because their words were so powerful and were so on point thematically. “The Dark Knight Rises” is at its best when its imagery evokes history. The trials and storming of the houses of Gotham’s rich feels like politics straight out of the Robespierre era. Meanwhile, watching cops trying to dig themselves out of rubble is a heart-wrenching reminder of the events of 9/11. Nolan needs to trust his abilities as a filmmaker, as well as the intelligence of the audience. That way, we will never have to see an exchange like this ever again:

 BANE: So, you came back to die with the rest of your city?
                                   BATMAN: No…I came back to stop you.
The real root of all of the problems of “The Dark Knight Rises” lies in the fact that it is a Batman movie that barely has any of Batman in it. The problem with the final installments of many trilogies is that they must struggle to rap up an entire story in a satisfying way. The ending of “The Dark Knight Rises” might have been satisfying in the past. However, because this trilogy redefined the way we look at superheroes, it just feels like it defeated itself.

Side note on the location of Gotham City: In “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” Gotham was modeled almost entirely after Chicago. “The Dark Knight Rises” switches to New York. This makes some sense, as to evoke the tragedies of 9/11, as well as Occupy Wall Street, but it is so obviously a different city to the point of distraction. We know it’s not a made up place if the Brooklyn Bridge, Freedom Tower, and Empire State Building are all visible. Also, the Los Angeles skyline graces the backdrop of another shot. These are three very different cities.

How I Rank Christopher Nolan’s Films (excluding “Following” and “Insomnia,” which I have yet to see):
1. The Prestige
2. The Dark Knight
3. Memento
4. Inception
5. Batman Begins
6. The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises: Final Official Final Theatrical Trailer

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Death supposedly follows the rule of three.* Comic book movie franchises tend to do the same thing. However, if anyone could defeat the Grim Reaper, it would be Christopher Nolan and “The Dark Knight Rises.” I don’t think much more needs to be said here. My heart was racing the entire time I watched it:

As Troy Barnes of “Community” once said, “I have the weirdest boner”.
*With the exception of “Iron Man 2.” It is a great example of how not to make a sequel.

The Oscars: Who Should Win

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In the coming weeks, you’ll find out who I think will be taking home the golden statues on February 27. But I would like to do something more important right now. Here now is who would be taking home all the Oscars if I could cast a ballot.

Best Picture: Black Swan

To some, “Black Swan” may seem like the most atypical Best Picture nomination out there. Yet, few other movies could fit the category so perfectly. After all, its story of being obsessed and enveloped into the process of making art mirrors the entire filmmaking process itself. The reason I really want “Black Swan” to win is that even three months after viewing it, I still have no idea what it is. And that makes it all the better. It’s exhilarating, weird, and sometimes even hard to watch and despite all that, it will never leave my head. It reminded me of watching something like “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Deer Hunter” for the first time: like those films, certain images from “Black Swan” will forever be engraved into my memory. It might be rare for us to ever see a movie about psychological deterioration this real, and this good, ever again.

Best Director: Darren Aronofsky

Because shouldn’t the Best Picture also have the best director? “Black Swan” represents a crossroads in Aronofsky’s career. It is a mixture of the distorted reality of “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream” and the hyper-realism of “The Wrestler.” All of this perfectly formed a view of reality through a damaged psychological mind. Aronofsky is truly a genius at using the camera to put the audience into a certain state of mind and never lets them leave it, even after the end credits have rolled. He succeeds not only at creating a new world and a set of emotions, but letting the viewer live in them and be haunted by them. He may not win the Oscar this year, but if he continues to make movies as good as “Black Swan,” the trophy will one day soon be his.

Best Actor: James Franco/Colin Firth

This was a difficult one. Firth is the frontrunner here, and he has earned his praise by being able to bring so much compassion, warmth, and humor to what could’ve been a stale performance. He is also a year overd
e for the award (he should’ve won for “A Single Man”). Yet Firth’s brilliance this year did not stand as strong as James Franco’s riveting performance in “127 Hours.” Really, what other actor could pull off

a performance that involves them being stuck in a canyon, by themself, for 90 minutes? “127 Hours” was a one man show in the truest sense and if Franco had messed up this performance, this movie would never have worked. He didn’t and alas, “127 Hours” was more than just a great movie: it was a transformative, gut-wrenching experience. Mr. Franco, between earning all those PhDs please, don’t stop acting.



Best Actress: Natalie Portman

Sometimes, in order for an actor to truly show off their abilities, they must play that role
no one ever thought they could pull off, and then pull it off. That emotional girl from “Garden State” has transformed into a disturbed young woman, trying to break free from the chains holding her down. With this role, Portman proved herself an actress who will do literally anything to achieve perfection. Yes, that even includes brutalizing her own body. In the end, her eventual transformation and descent into madness doesn’t feel forced or over-the-top; it just feels so sad and real. Aronofsky made “Black Swan” a visual marvel, and Portman became the big, twisted heart in its center.
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale

Because who the hell else would I choose? Bale didn’t just steal every scene he was in in “The Fighter,” he makes every other character in the movie totally insignificant. Bale’s method acting is comparable to De Niro in his prime. Bale is so good that he is constantly trying to find new ways to act; as he acts with every inch of his body. Even when he isn’t front and center of ac certain scene, he still manages to steal it. For a character who suffers from a serious crack addiction, Bale brings an unexpected quality to the film, something missing from most films of this subject matter: joy. I could probably use this entire blog space to talk about Bale’s performance, but some things are better off left unsaid.


Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld

You’d have to be a pretty talented fourteen-year-old to hold your own against the likes of Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, but Hailee Steinfeld managed to do it. Rather than being some annoying teenage girl, she was instead poised and wise, outshining all of her superiors. In just one role, she has proved herself mature enough to do anything, even firing a rifle. In a world where teen idols include Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, Steinfeld is a nice breath of fresh air.

Best Original Screenplay: The Kids Are All Right

I desperately want to say that my choice is “Inception.” However, that would likely be just because I wish Christopher Nolan was nominated for Best Director. Also, “Black Swan” was criminally snubbed in this category. So instead, I’m going with that comedy I can’t get enough of: “The Kids Are All Right.” Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg’s screenplay found a sense of humor deriving from character, rather than gags and forgettable one-liners. The whole thing has a quality of honesty that is missing from most movies made nowadays. Most importantly, it handled its subject matter with such truth and delicacy. No message was being shoved down our throats, this was simply a movie about a lesbian couple, and a dysfunctional family. In order to make something acceptable, it is best to show how similar, rather than how different, it is from our regular lives.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network

It takes a lot to be compared to “Citizen Kane” without sounding hyperbolic.
Of course, Aaron Sorkin was able to somehow make this a reality. For

a film about a bunch of court cases, it has a quality of fast-paced humor and entertainment missing from most films based on true stories nowadays. Despite the fact that a lot of this story may be fictionalized, it still managed to capture a moment. That moment is the moment when the internet suddenly became the new driving force of our lives. And then in the end, it made Mark Zuckerberg both a raging anti-hero and a tragic figure, someone to admire and even pity at the same time. Aaron Sorkin, you are the glue that held this fine piece of filmmaking together.


Movie Review: The Prestige

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Only Christopher Nolan could turn something dumb into something smart, and something smart into something artistic. There have been a lot of movies made about magicians, but none quite like this. “The Prestige” makes magic seem real, and it portrays the ways to obtain it as truly genius.

“The Prestige” follows the same vain as films such as “Sunset Boulevard” and “American Beauty” and uses a narrator who speaks from beyond the grave. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), an American magician, begins the film by being murdered by rival British magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).
From there on, the film flashes between many different points in time. All of the jealousy and obsession between the rivals is revealed to show how it all leads up to the film’s deadly conclusion. If you think I’ve given away the whole plot just because I revealed the ending, you don’t even know the half of it.
“The Prestige” is the maximum potential greatness that “Inception” could’ve been if it had a stronger screenplay. While “The Prestige” might not have had the budget or effects of “Inception,” it is an underrated gem that outshines it simply for its story.
Writing is a small factor that matters much more than most people realize. “The Prestige” has just about as many twists and complicated layers as “Inception,” yet it handles them in a much clearer way. “Inception” was like a puzzle where you were given the pieces, but had no clue what they were supposed to create. “The Prestige” is like a puzzle where you know what it wants to create, you just have to figure out how to piece it together. This is not meant to speak ill of “Inception,” simply to try and understand why “The Prestige” fell so under the radar.
Like the characters in every single one of his films, Nolan is something of an obsessive. That helps give way to his strikingly accurate image of England in the 1800s. He also obsessively strives to make magic and the world of magicians not just performance, but art. Nolan puts the magic back into magic, which was taken away intentionally by Gob Bluth in “Arrested Development” and unintentionally by “The Illusionist.”
In the world of “The Prestige,” magic doesn’t just involve a straight face; it requires the magician to be intelligent, innovative, and artful. Magic tricks should actually be magical. Although in this world, some of it could actually be real.
As for the acting, Jackman shows he is not quite as world class as some of his co-stars, but he is certainly trying his best. Bale meanwhile, is as wildly spot-on as always. Even in moments that seem genuine, he is always projecting a dark underside that is just waiting to be revealed at every moment. That is what truly makes Bale such a great actor: his unpredictability.
Nolan favorite Michael Caine also starts in “The Prestige” and for the first time in years, he plays a large, incredibly vital part of a story. While he usually plays the nice old mentor who helps the hero out, in “The Prestige,” his role is less good and much more ambiguous. None of the characters in the movie would function without him. Also, for the sake of getting my hits up on Google, I thought I’d mention that Scarlett Johansson is also in this movie.
“The Prestige” reminded me of the recent “Black Swan,” mainly in its final twist. Like “Black Swan,” it pulled off an ending that could’ve been guessed and still makes it both shocking and exciting. Even if an end twist is obvious, it can always be good as long as the filmmaker isn’t pretentious about it.
Some might call Nolan a modern day Spielberg for his ability to convert smart ideas in huge blockbusters. “The Prestige,” meanwhile, is Nolan at his most Hitchcockian. Everything about it from the perils of obsession to the way the twists and thrills are laid out would make the British master of suspense proud.
“The Prestige” takes a genre that was stretched to its end and makes it fresh and captivating again. “The Prestige” is the best kind of psychological thriller: it actually makes you use your brain to enjoy it.
If You Liked This Movie, You’ll Also Like: Black Swan, Fight Club, Inception, Memento, Moon, There Will Be Blood, Vertigo

Movie Review: The Fighter

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When “The Fighter” was first released, the common reaction was likely, “are you kidding? Another boxing movie?” If a director has the chutzpah to make a movie about a topic that has been explored to death, he better make something good. Since it’s David O. Russell, the director of “Three Kings,” then it must be worth our while.


“The Fighter” is the kind of entertainment that has a huge mass audience potential, yet its slow pace is made for those with patience. The film begins as a psuedo-documentary and switches between that and narrative format throughout. This film tells the true story of Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a struggling boxer from a rough neighborhood in Lowell, Massachusetts. His future career as a boxer is compromised by both his love for a beautiful bartender (Amy Adams) and his dysfunctional family, which includes his abusive mother (Melissa Leo) and his washed up, crack addicted brother, who is a former boxer (Christian Bale).

“The Fighter” is what one might consider a slow burner, for better or worse. It begins slow and at first doesn’t seem to know quite which direction to take the story. It takes an extremely dramatic twist less than midway into the story for “The Fighter” to truly pick up steam. It goes from an average underdog story to something very different; something that is much more immediate and important than the typical Hollywood fable.


“The Fighter” also brings a new dimension to the now popular tough-and-from-Boston film. Coming off the heels of this year’s “The Town” as well as “The Departed,” “Gone Baby Gone,” and “Good Will Hunting” of past years, Boston has become less of a city and more of a theme in the eye of the filmmaker. Growing up in Boston means being tied down to societal and familial constraints. The only way to escape these constraints comes through pursuing one’s passion, whether that be solving math problems, robbing banks, or boxing.

While this is also one of the more realistic looks at crime and drug problems in the city, there is also a sense of warmth surrounding the characters unseen in most other Boston films. This can be seen mainly in that fantastic first scene, where Mickey and Dicky walk through the streets of Lowell and embrace everyone they see shows that in a way, everyone is looking to escape with Mickey. Everyone feels Mickey’s quest is their quest as well.


Looking past a few small flaws, “The Fighter” is an example of how a few good performances can severely impact the course of a film. Wahlberg is a fine choice for Mickey. In fact, this could even be a bit of a personal role for him given his past in Boston as well as his troubles with family and the law. However, he is nothing truly special. He lacks that hilarious, nasty, and committed attitude that made his performance in “The Departed” so unforgettable.

The true strength of the ensemble lies in a few supporting characters. The ladies of the film bring much needed emotional depth to their roles. Adams is proving herself a fine young actress capable of even bigger roles while Leo shows she is always more than capable of playing troubled, lower class mothers.


The real soul, the real strength of the film, lies totally in the performance of Christian Bale. It is weird to think he is even a supporting character, given how much of the story relies on him, and how he dominates every scene he is in and makes you forget the story is really about Mickey Ward. I could tell from the film’s very first shot that his performance was going to be something special. Like Natalie Portman in “Black Swan,” Bale acts with his entire body. With his googly eyes, shaky arms, and salamander-like body, he is the sad embodiment of drug addiction. Bale makes Dicky fast-talking, funny, and sad. He starts the story as someone we look at and pity, but by the end, he has truly earned his redemption.
What is most interesting about Bale’s style of method acting, most similar to De Niro in his glory days, is that he is always acting. A common habit for an actor when they are in a shot where they don’t talk is to just sit silently, and stare. Bale however, doesn’t end his drug-addled fidgeting. I could probably spend an entire review talking about Bale’s acting, but there is actually a whole movie here to still talk about. So let’s just say this: Bale has earned this year’s Best Supporting Actor statue.
What Bale’s performance shows is the potential energy and excitement surrounding the story that “The Fighter” is ultimately able to embody. “The Fighter” is the story of the unlikely coming true. Director David O. Russell, who also made the Gulf War parable “Three Kings” highly plausible (and still relevant), succeeds at this task admirably. Scenes like the one where the characters walk through the streets, as mentioned earlier, show the uplifting potential of such depressing material. Not to mention, the boxing scenes are shot in a televised style, capturing the excitement of watching a match live. It also creates a strange, yet effective, detachment from the actual violence happening onscreen.
“The Fighter” is a film that shows that what is ultimately most important is not what a film is about, but how it is about. There are only so many stories to be told so the same old stories might as well be told in new, innovative ways.
The struggle of the boxer has been captured so many times that it can’t possibly be interesting anymore. However, David O. Russell makes the right choice and takes a page out of the “Raging Bull” handbook of how to make a good sports film and barely focuses on the actual sport itself. The sport is less of a sport and more of a means for the characters to express themselves in some way, either to release energy, or overcome adversity. The title of “The Fighter” does not suggest someone fighting for a title, but rather someone fighting merely to stay alive.