This movie starts with great intentions and ends on an exhilarating high but the line from one point to the other is not straight. It sags. (Which is more than can be said for Tom Hardy's trapezius muscles that coil round his neck like a buff python digesting a portion of uranium fuel rods).
Gavin O'Connor's epic essay on mumbling manhood sets off well, channelling the best of The Fighter - low-key, drab, blue collar, earthy.
It introduces us to Tommy, the soldier with a secret; his loathed dad Paddy (Nick Nolte as a walking embodiment of the word "grizzled") who beat the bottle but not before beating his wife; and Brendan, who escaped the fractured family to create a nice one of his own (wife Jennifer Morrison is, sadly, only scenery).
The feuding brothers must both take the $5million pot at Sparta, the winner-takes-all Mixed Martial Arts event. Tommy for redemption and Joel to stick it to the bank.
Meanwhile Paddy (as Tommy's trainer and Brendan's neglectful nemesis) needs forgiveness from the boys whose lives he ruined.
Halfway through the movie drifts from this interesting premise. Some clumsy oaf spilled a carton of fight movie cliche juice all over the script obscuring the original intent.
Characters, who began with tales to tell, collapse under the weight of emotional manipulation like an MMA amateur under a crunching tackle from Pete Mad Dog Grimes.
It's not sufficient that Brendan's home is at risk, his daughter has to have a heart condition. It's not sufficient that Tommy is a troubled veteran, he has to be a reluctant war hero (cue, uniformed Marines at Sparta flying the flag). It's not sufficient to bring the best of the US to the final, there's got to be a superfluous "unbeatable" Russian.
The movie should belong to Joel Edgerton's Brendan, the plucky underdog with the frame of a chewed Swan Vesta.
But Tom Hardy, who has cornered the market in lachrymose lunks, rises through the undercard and undoes Joel with yet another in an unbroken line of assured and authentic performances.
Here, Hardy prowls and broods and he is superbly effective as both coiled spring and broken cog.
The two brothers inevitably face each other in the final (not a spoiler, it's in the trailers).
The resulting bout is raw, wincing and rousing but it is also inconsistent and flawed. The actors require huge amounts of dexterity to follow both O'Connor's fight choreography and his character contortions.
But the film is built precisely for this blistering finale so expect the male contingent to quit the cinema with something in their eye before smashing their fist into a lamppost to re-start production of testosterone.
– From September 2011
