Monday, September 12, 2011

Principal: You're a teacher. You got no business in the ring with those animals!

Brendan: Actually, I used to be one of those animals. I guess I forgot to put that down on my application.
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I have to say, I really enjoyed Warrior, a lot. It is getting good reviews, but I still went into the theater not sure if I was going to like it. I am not a huge fight fan but this was FANTASTIC.

The acting was great, the music by Mark Isham was moving and you cannot help but get into these fights.  There were even a few ladies behind me in the theater that were cheering and clapping :o)

The story is about two brothers whose parents got divorced when they were teenagers and each boy chose to live with a different parent. Tommy chose his mother who he ended up taking care of when she gets sick. He is an ex-Marine who has just come home for the first time in fourteen years. Brendan chooses their alcoholic father so that he can stay near the girl he loves, with whom he ends up getting married and having two children. He is a former UFC fighter and is currently teaching Physics to high schoolers. Both brothers individually decide to start training for SPARTA, the biggest winner-takes-all, mixed-martial-arts tournament ever.

If you have actually paid attention to any of the trailers, then you know going into the movie that both of them end up in the championship, but you are still invested in every single hit of every single fight. You cannot help but root for these brothers and get nervous for them when you think they might lose. Each brother has different reasons for wanting to win, but neither one is any less motivated.

Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton are phenomenal and even Nick Nolte's performance surprised me. I also have to say that normally Jennifer Morrison irritates me (I was not a fan of her last season on How I Met Your Mother) but even she was great in this role. I also loved Kevin Dunn as the principal of the school where Edgerton's character works.



There were a few things that were left unanswered at the end and a few plot points that probably could have been left out. However, none of that really took anything away from the film as a whole.

While a majority of the film is the fights, that is not what drives the plot and certainly not what keeps you invested in these characters. I saw this last night and I am ready to see it again right now, I loved it that much.

xoxo
c
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