Warrior Movie
Movie Reviews this week looks at the highly acclaimed martial arts drama Warrior.
It stars the very impressive Tom Hardy (Bronson) as Tommy Conlon complete with an American accent, as a war vet, who happens to arrive at the door step of his estranged father Paddy Conlon played by the always dependable Nick Nolte (The Fisher King).
It turns out the reason for the estrangement is that Paddy was a violent husband, and his wife took one of her sons Tommy to get away from him.
Even though Paddy tells his son he has been sober now for a 1000 days, Tommy is not impressed, and it turns out that Tommy is here for the main reason of a MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) tournament with a prize money of $5 million, and is as detached from his father emotionally as you can get.
We find out Paddy has another son Brendan played by Joel Edgerton (Smokin’ Aces), who he is also detached from, a physics teacher who spices up the lessons in class to gain the attention (and it must be mentioned he does it very successfully, there is a memorable moment where he tries to get the class to understand Newton’s first law, Mass equals acceleration with a baseball bat). Brendan’s has a lovely wife Tess played by the gorgeous Jennifer Morrison (House) and two lovely daughters. It turns out Brendan is behind on the mortgage and is facing foreclosure. Telling his wife that he is bouncing at a local club, he enters into a MMA competition at a parking lot, that is caught on Youtube, much to the surprise of his students in his Physics class. Although he wins the bout, his wife isn’t neither is his faculty head at the school, and he is given a leave of absence.
With Brendan facing certain foreclosure he explains to his wife that entering the MMA competition with the five million prize money is their only way out, she reluctantly agrees but not before putting up a fight as she recalled the last time he was in a bout and she had to pick him up from the hospital. Brendan turns to his friend and long time trainer Frank Campana played by Frank Grillo (Minority Report)to get him in shape for the tournament, while Tommy turns to his father, although they are at loggerheads most of the time, Tommy knows his father is a very good trainer, and Tommy intends to use the money for an army comrade’s family. With some of the biggest names in MMA coming to the tournament you wonder if Brendan especially has made a fatal mistake.
Warrior is a very intriguing movie, and you feel for the characters as their desperate fight for survival physically and emotionally takes its toil.
Filed under: Movie reviews