Warrior by Gavin O’Connor

Warrior by Gavin O'Connor

I have a confession to make: I love martial arts. I love martial arts movies. There’s nothing more primal than watching two people beating the shit out of each other. Warrior is a movie that understands this but earns that fun legitimately through the three lead performances. It works on these two levels.

Joel Edgerton brings genuine goodness to the film. His character Brendan Conlon is formerly-failed MMA fighter turned school teacher, the bank is taking his house and now he is fighting in the cage to keep his family together. And through being motivated by family, he becomes a better fighter. You root for him. You want him to win.

I’ve never seen Nick Nolte so raw and completely naked playing this broken old man trying to repair his regrets. The Nick Nolte-isms do not shortcut him. He’s earned that Oscar nomination, though I don’t think he’ll win this year.

Here’s why I think Tom Hardy is a great actor: he acts with his entire body. No, I’m not talking about his deltoids (though “Tom Hardy’s deltoids” completely earn another independent credit in this movie). It’s an fine-tuned, equally internal and external performance. Notice the way he grunts, the weight in his walk, how he speaks under his breath and the way he glares his eyes like he’s going to lose it any second. He’s not even human in this movie. He is a mythic beast. Let’s just say, the bat will be broken.

The fights themselves are exciting to watch because of four aesthetic reasons, 1) The drama works. We care. 2) The actors are doing it. The camera doesn’t do anything to hide a stuntman. 3) The fights happen in film time, not real time. They’re editing on dramatic beats. They’re not sticking to how real MMA fights play out, which most of the time is people hugging each other on the ground. (If you’ve seen Never Back Down, you know what I’m talking about.) They’re presented in a realistic fashion with the boring parts omitted. 4) You feel the pain of these fights. On a side note, I also enjoyed the dual training montage sequence. They’re acknowledging the origin of the DNA strain (uh.. Rocky, anybody?) and trying to evolve it into something of their own. I appreciated that.

This was probably the most fun I’ve had watching a movie this year. I have a soft spot for it.

That said, I’m a little jealous that Joel Edgerton pulled off a flying armbar. That took me months!

Haywire by Steven Soderbergh

Gina Carano holds her own as the lead and actually is the most interesting thing about the film. Along with how the fights are filmed, she brings much gravitas to the film. You never doubt her fighting ability for a second. And most importantly, we feel the pain of these fights. Even given that  she’s probably padded underneath her clothes and is pulling the punches, the force of the hits look real. Often, she is being knocked against objects, which cannot be faked. I’m all for more martial arts films filmed in this way.

Much of the film’s style takes from the Ocean’s 11 movies: the jazzy, snappy music plays along as people go inside and outside of buildings, scoping out an environment and hatching up plans. There is something very cinematic about seeing something being assembled (i.e. like a sniper rifle being assembled or a team of thieves hatching a plan for a heist). And there is nothing Steven Soderbergh likes more than filming people opening and closing briefcases or car trunks, picking up bags and moving along to some other place with a plan to do something.

I believe this Ocean’s 11 heist film style works against the film. It brings too much lightness, which is antithetical to the reality of the world that it is set in. And also the reality of what the fight scenes are bringing to the table. There is a really subtle moment where Gina Carano, escaping from capture, trips over and hurts herself. It’s a small moment that brings a lot of reality, A) she’s not invincible B) she makes mistakes. But all that ultimately is unbalanced because those other heist-like scenes are filmed too slick. It takes away the tension and the pain, and you feel that she will get away with it with the finger-snapping soundtrack playing in the background.

Oddly, all the thespians are sidetracked because they’re not really given anything interesting to do. The film seems to slow down when it’s just the actors as there is no real scenery-chewing to be done. I wish they would replace one or two of these actors with other real-life mixed martial artists so she would have someone challenging to fight with in the film. Like in Ong Bak (or what I call Look What Tony Jaa Can Do!), as many henchmen Tony Jaa took down, they still build up the end fight with another martial artist (the one on steroids, for those keeping track).

Though being a massive martial arts fan, I really look forward to seeing more of Gina Carano. If they ever make a live-action Wonder Woman movie, she would be the ideal choice. Heck, at one point in the movie, they even called her Wonder Woman.