But this film is not really about him. Micky himself was and is
soft-spoken, shy, and sensible. He didn't say or do anything very
colorful, and was not very interesting cinematic subject, despite
his amazing career. He was just a dull, hard-working guy who took his job
seriously, like most of us who will never have movies made about our
lives. His job just happened to be beating the crap out of other guys. If
it's not a conventional biography of Micky, it's not really a boxing film
either, even though it follows all the same plot points as every fictional
fight movie you've ever seen. If it were a film for fans of the so-called
sweet science, it would have ended with the three spectacularly sour and
unscientific bloodbaths he fought against Arturo Gatti. The two sluggers
specialized in taking punishment as well as they could dish it out, and
they made a habit of sending each other to the hospital. Their first
battle, won by Ward,
is often cited as the greatest ever, but this alleged boxing film
never even mentions the alleged greatest boxing match of all time, and
that fact will tell you that The Fighter is not the kind of film that
requires a love for, or even any knowledge about, boxing. The minimum
standard to enjoy the film is a mere tolerance for boxing. The film never
even mentions the legendary Gatti fights, and its not one of those films
where you are meant to feel the punches from the audience. The fight
scenes in the film are actually quite tame by modern standards.
The real core of the film is the personal and professional relationship
between Ward and his fimily, particularly his older brother, the
welterweight
Dicky Eklund. Dicky had once been considered the star boxer
of the family, and had even achieved a modicum of national fame when he
floored Sugar Ray Leonard before losing a unanimous decision. Dicky
was not the same kind of fighter as Micky. Far leaner than his compact
brother, he could never match his sibling's punching power. Only 13% of
Dicky's fights ended with victorious KOs, compared to 53% for Micky. But
Dicky was fairly effective as an Ali-style fighter, a guy who would dance
longer and faster than his opponent, and he employed that style well
enough to go the distance with some very tough opponents, including
Leonard, Dave Green and Erkki Meronen. (Green was the European champion at
one time, and Merronen was 37-1 at one point in his career.)
Eklund had fallen on hard times by the time of his brother's first
retirement. Although he was supposed to be training his brother, he had
gotten addicted to crack, had become undependable, and had even become a
hard-core criminal. Eklund's fall from glory was the subject of a major
HBO documentary,
High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell. Dicky's incarceration
was the back-breaking straw which ultimately pushed his brother into his
first retirement. Unlike his taciturn younger brother, Dicky was very
cinematic indeed. He spoke in his own form of Yogisms, and was lively,
charismatic and cocky. Although brother Micky's personal life was mundane
and essentially uncinematic, Dicky's was the polar opposite, a crime film
waiting for a camera.
And a conviction.
While Dickys' jail sentence had originally seemed like the end of the
world to him and his family, it actually saved his life. With his body and
mind force-freed from the debilitating impact of crack, he was able to
recover his health and his sanity in prison, and emerged from the
experience chastened and straight. As the result of some tricky family
negotiations, Dicky eventually re-entered his brother's career, and the
two were genuine partners in Micky's subsequent success.
As you might expect, the contrasting styles of the real-life brothers
drew radically different actors to play them. The most difficult part of
playing Micky was capturing what he did in the ring, and the athletic Mark
Wahlberg, who looks like a fighter to begin with, did everything necessary
to be as convincing as he needed to be. On the other hand, the family
drama didn't center on the quiet, unassuming Micky, so Marky Mark didn't
even have to break a sweat to embody Micky. He basically just played Mark
Wahlberg, and that happened to fit perfectly. The film's real casting
challenge was to find someone to capture the wild and eccentric motormouth
that was Dick Eklund. Matt Damon was originally reported to have been cast
in the role, and I like Matt's performances very much, but I can't imagine
that he could have altered his own personality enough to play the
free-spirited Dicky. The role finally went to the obsessive method actor
Christian Bale, who went to his usual outlandish lengths to capture every
nuance of Eklund's personality and appearance, right down to the bad teeth
and bald spot. Although Bale normally weighs around 190 pounds, he
(almost) shrunk himself down to welterweight size for this role, and also
managed to master Dicky's accent and mannerisms. He even trained at
Dicky's own gym in preparation for the fight, and kept right at it after
the film was lensed, when he was trying to gain his weight back. Bale's
hard work paid off with an astounding and memorable performance which
seems certain to earn him an Oscar nomination, and perhaps the award
itself.
By the way, Matt Damon wasn't the only famous name to be attached to
the film in the past. Before landing the current director, David O.
Russell, actor-producer Mark Wahlberg pitched the project to Martin
Scorsese, who took a pass, and Darren Aronofsky, who accepted the
director's chair then later withdrew, but kept a foot in the door as an
executive producer.
It's not a very thoughtful film, but it's an engrossing and
entertaining film to watch because it has a solid story populated by
colorful characters, all of which are played by top actors. Bale and the
other three stars of the film all earned deserved Golden Globe
nominations. That group includes Wahlberg, Mellissa Leo as the brothers'
stage mother, and Amy Adams as Micky's future wife, a confrontational
outsider who finds herself unable to get accepted within the brothers'
family clique. Setting aside the fine performances, the script itself
passes the Scoopy Prime Directive for biopics, in that it would still be
fascinating even if it were entirely fictional. By choosing the right
elements to include and exclude in the narrative, the screenwriters were
able to use the unaltered facts to create a biography which plays out like
a conventional, old-fashioned "underdog triumphs" boxing movie, while at
the same time creating a vivid, realistic, and colorful family drama which
requires no real interest in boxing at all.
And it's all the more involving because it really happened.
