Cinema 2011 #14: The Fighter

David O. Russell’s The Fighter is a heavyweight drama that will leave you feeling punch drunk in its wake, an appropriately understated film that is as much about family as it is about boxing. It pieces together the story of Irish Mickey Ward, a welterweight brawler from Lowell, Massachusetts, and his progression towards a shot at a title fight. So far so so-so, another sporting flick about a guy on a Rocky road to achieve his competitive ambition. But it is the setting of Mickey’s bouts against the backdrop of his troubled relationships with his mother Alice and brother Dickie Eklund, himself a former fighter whose addiction to crack has ended his career, that lifts this film above the derivative sequels of Stallone’s eponymous slugger.