The Fighter

How to account for The Fighter? Trumpeted as an awards contender, it’s certainly the strangest and most erratic Oscar bait in memory. It seems that Russell—during the implosion of his personal project, Nailed—picked up a long-gestating screenplay almost filmed by executive producer Darren Aronofsky, and, in shooting it, overlaid it with surface eccentricities, although he’s kept it conventional enough for it to pass muster with the suits. As a true-life boxing saga—the story of how Lowell, Massachusetts, lightweight Micky Ward (Wahlberg) reconciled advice from his family and girlfriend, Charlene (Adams), and went pro—it’s snoozier than most. But the constant stream of vulgar comedy, off-kilter shot choices (why is the camera following that phone cord?) and local details keep it surprisingly funky, albeit in a way that never quite clarifies whether Russell is making the material his own or simply thumbing his nose at it. (When Micky’s mother and his gaggle of sisters show up on the porch to disrupt Micky and Charlene’s afternoon nuzzling, the film officially leaves planet Earth.)

So the movie is entertaining, as far as it goes, if you can ignore the fact that the ostensible drama never really develops much in the way of stakes; subplots about Micky’s brother’s arrest and struggles with crack addiction almost come across as intrusions from another film. (Bale, buzz notwithstanding, seriously overdoes the lug shtick.) If you can accept a foursquare boxing movie in which the final fight is the least exciting sequence, maybe The Fighter is for you.