GRADE: B+

MINI REVIEW: Using the boxing ring as a metaphor for a larger and more important story, “The Fighter,” based on a true story, is a crowd-pleasing triumph about a working class underdog with multiple Oscar locks.

Directed by: David O. Russell

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, Amy Adams

Rated R for language throughout, drug content, some violence and sexuality.

Running Time: 114 minutes

For a sport that appeals to a small, if vocal, sliver of sports fans, boxing films are so plentiful and often such critical darlings, that they might just constitute their own genre. “The Fighter” doesn’t reinvent that wheel, but it does exemplify the very best of it. Unlike most sports movies which emphasize the clash of rivals on the field, many boxing movies—at the least the best ones—use the ring as a metaphor for a far larger and more important story. In this, “The Fighter,” based on a true story, excels—a crowd-pleasing triumph about a working class underdog.

Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) has always lived in his half-brother’s shadow. As the “pride of Lowell,” Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) is a local boxing legend who once guaranteed his 15 minutes of fame by knocking Sugar Ray Leonard down in a title bout. Though his legend is undiminished in the down-on-its-luck industrial Massachusetts town in which he lives, Dicky is a wispy shadow of his former glory—gaunt, hobbled and hopelessly addicted to crack. Now Micky has a chance to become a great fighter in his own right and just maybe break free from the expectations of his domineering manager mother (Melissa Leo) and his wildly dysfunctional family. Is Dicky the man to help him reach that goal, or is he the very thing holding Micky back?

“The Fighter” isn’t so much a boxing biopic as it is an examination of blue-collar dysfunction, both personal and corporate. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Bale’s Dicky, looking almost skeletal enough to have walked off the set of a zombie thriller, parades around talking about a comeback everyone, himself including, knows is impossible, but no one is willing to acknowledge out loud. If you’ll pardon the all-too obvious cliché, Bale is the Oscar lock for Best Supporting Actor—he KOs the competition as a man possessed of equal parts tragedy and hope. No less of a lock is Leo, the chain-smoking, potty-mouthed matriarch of a low-class estrogen mafia composed of herself and her caravan of vulgar, vicious daughters. Amy Adams, who plays Micky’s bullied bartender girlfriend, enjoys a rare tough-girl role; her steel backbone is more than a match for what Micky’s family throws at her.

Finally, Wahlberg is perfect for this sort of role, so perfect in fact that his contribution may be largely underplayed and invisible. Just as the movie is about Micky but our focus falls more on his brother, so too is Wahlberg the lead though our attention constantly wanders. Both actor and character take the slight gracefully…mostly. Tired of his mother’s obvious favoritism, Micky must believe in himself when no one else is inclined to. He faces more than unfair odds in the ring; his mother’s house is far more bruising than any ring could be. Micky is a gentle man in a sport of thugs, and he knows, long before we do, that he has what it takes to be a far greater fighter than his local celebrity brother ever was.

“The Fighter” is familiar, yet never in a plagiaristic sort of way. This is a genre in which predictability is part of the allure. We have all seen stories of underdogs fighting the odds to come out on top. Hollywood keeps making them and we keep watching them because they are the sorts of stories in which he see ourselves and they therefore never grow too old or stale. Rather than try to reinvent the genre, director David O. Russell (“Three Kings”) uses handheld cameras and intentionally unlovely cinematography to find new ways to tell the same story. The result is a hilarious, profane melodrama, a sociological, economic and familial deconstruction that examines the frayed edges of a town, a family and brotherly rivalry/camaraderie.

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