Let’s get ready to rumble!!!!!
There are a lot of great “fighter” movies out there. Rocky’s I through IV (NOT Rocky V) and Rocky Balboa, Bloodsport, The Fighter and, of course my favorite, Fight Club. Well, now you can add another one to the list: “Warrior.”
Warrior is a not just a story about the world of mixed martial arts and octogons, but also a story of a broken family trying to regain some semblance of being a family that still loves each other.
The two main characters in this film are brothers. The older one, Brenden Conlon, is a school teacher who has a family and is not making enough scratch to make the payments on his house, so he joins the MMA circuit to make some extra money. His younger brother is a little more disturbed. Tommy is a marine war hero who has gone AWOL and is trying to figure out his life. A life that was filled with the misery of having an alcoholic father (played fantastically by Nick Nolte) and caring for his mother as she slowly dies of cancer.
Now, as I sat in the theatre watching these two brothers beat the tar out of their opponents on their way to the finals, I found myself cheering for both of them. So of course you know what happens next… Yep, they have to fight each other. I won’t tell you who wins, you have to see the movie to get the answer to that, but I will tell you that it is a skull-thumping rumble and the end is a tear-jerker.
There are some great scenes in this film, some happy, some funny, but more sad. That does not hurt the movie in the slightest. If there is one criticism I may have, it would be that I wish the fight scenes were filmed just a tad better (the fence that goes around the octogon kept getting in the way).
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you who plays the two brothers. Joel Edgerton (who played Owen Lars in “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones”) is the older brother Brenden, and Tommy is played by Tom Hardy, (Inception). And let me tell you, Tom Hardy is an “up and comer” in Hollywood.
So, get out to the theatre and see “Warrior,” you won’t regret it.
And whatever you do, DON’T go see “Contagion,” I still think it stinks.
Matty W. Kelley