I feel almost willing to compare this movie to one, now revered film from the 90s, Airborne. Airborne sits on the shelf living as documented proof of our obsession with “extreme” sports (i.e. rollerblading, surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, etc.) in the 90s. This film I think will serve as proof of our current popular obsession with MMA fighting and a decade or two away from now, like extreme sports, it will still exist, but we definitely won’t be talking about it anywhere near as much except just to look back and remember how horrible a decision we made to eve be a fanatic of such a thing.

However, unlike the 90s time capsule of a film that I mentioned, this can actually be entered into a discussion as a solid movie. It does everything that a movie of this genre is to do. It gives us a protagonist, actually two with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, to cheer for as he pushes himself from nothing to walking into the ring to eventually reach the final round of the big money tournament. The film’s trailer, which I’m going to assume you’ve seen, gives away the fact that both brothers manage to reach the final round of the tournament where they are forced to face off with each other. What worked well is that even though the film’s trailer decided to spoil the fact that the brothers make the tournament’s final the winner isn’t important in the scope of things. As stakes go, both competitors have enough on the line that we’re happy whichever of the two happen to take the purse home. We’re more interested if the fight itself manages to mend the relationship between the brothers.

As said before, the film’s meat actually exists is the relationships. If you had to pick a true main character that you find more and more about as the film goes on it has to be Tommy (Tom Hardy). Tommy is the quiet one in the room who surprises you moment after moment when he’s forced to act since he never says anything about himself. He refuses to talk about it all. We just see scene to scene how relationships are on more than rocky terms with any and everyone who knows him and slowly but surely we see why they stand in such poor condition and eventually whether their ever going be mended. While Brendan (Joel Edgerton) has his own developments throughout the runtime of the film, it’s nowhere as intriguing as watching Tommy deal with his own issues, or not deal with them as he does more intently.

The film doesn’t quite give you a real reason to sympathize with Tommy’s decisions in life but rather allows you to cheer for him mainly because he’s so awesome in the ring. He’s the guy who you just don’t see coming until he’s there and then you’re so happy to see the surprise. He’s the official upsetter in the sport that we all love to see from time to time, especially when we’re being objective and don’t have money on the line.

As a side note, the commentators of the event are quite possible the worst sports commentators I’ve ever heard (i.e. American commentators). However, I think my favourite commentator moment that I love is when the two men are arguing about how Tommy is going to do in his first fight and one of them say “he ripped a door off a tank!” and the other keeps arguing with him that it doesn’t mean anything.

Rating: 8.0/10