By: Neil Smith
Estranged brothers come to blows in Gavin O'Connor's punchy drama, a film that - like The Fighter before it - combines feral fisticuffs in the ring with familial conflict outside of it. This time, though, it is not a boxing title that is at stake but a $5 million purse - the reward for whoever is left standing after a winner takes all mixed martial arts tournament with the intimidating name of Sparta.
In the red corner is Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), a family man and teacher who is only taking part to stop his house being repossessed. In the blue corner, meanwhile, is his brother Tommy (Tom Hardy), a wrestling prodigy turned US marine with his own personal reasons for entering the competition.
Both boys have a beef with their father Paddy (Nick Nolte), a reformed alcoholic who made life a misery for their mom when she was alive and is now struggling to stay on the wagon. Newly back from Iraq, though, Tommy is not above employing him as his trainer, something that - together with his pounds of rock-hard muscle and simmering rage - appears to give him the edge over everyone else participating in the contest, the ageing Brendan included.
The stage is set then for a hugely improbable climactic face-off in Atlantic City, an inevitable finale O'Connor does his level best to forestall for as long as possible. In the interim there are lots of bruising bouts against other opponents that enable us to sample each brother's respective tactics, Brendan's patient and methodical waiting game contrasting with Tommy's angry pitbull ferocity.
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Regrettably for Warrior's already tenuous credibility, that is not the only thing that sets the Australian Edgerton and Britain's Tom Hardy apart. Even with the heftiest pinch of salt imaginable, it's impossible to swallow they're part of the same family. Hell, there are times when they do not even seem part of the same species. How did two such physically, facially and temperamentally dissimilar individuals come from the same womb? It's a nagging inconsistency which proves as difficult to shift as the smell of sweat in a locker room, no matter how hard O'Connor tries to brush it under the carpet.
This he does by largely keeping Brendan and Tommy apart until their confrontation, focusing instead on their different journeys to that all-or-nothing final. In the latter's case this involves chickens hatched in the war zone coming home to roost. Brendan, meanwhile, has more prosaic concerns, having conveniently forgotten to mention to his wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison) that he's temporarily given up teaching for a more perilous line of work.
Clocking in at a flabby two hours plus, Warrior takes its own sweet time reaching a destination that is never much in doubt. Yet it is an enthralling ride all the same, the visceral scraps punctuating what, even with all its improbabilities and unlikelihoods, remains an engrossing take on a theme as old as Cain and Abel.
Verdict: Hardy and Edgerton make a decent fist of this far-fetched glove story.
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