Warrior (2011) Review

Warrior (2011) 

Warrior follows Tommy, an ex-marine, and his brother Brendan, a high school science teacher, who, after separate runs of bad luck, enter a grand prix MMA tournament where they must go to war against each other, confronting their past in the process. 

Every so often you come across a sports movie that manages to find just the right balance of drama and action, where the drama influences the action to create a powerful emotional backdrop for everything to unfold. Warrior brings all that to the table and then some, because this film is so much more than just fighting. It’s about the raw, unsaid emotion of a broken family that will always remain there, no matter what. It’s about the separate but parallel journeys of two brothers just trying to rebuild their lives despite the hardships they faced growing up. And of course, once we enter the ring, it becomes about those two brothers confronting each other and their past in brutal and crushing ways as a form of acceptance. 

The entire backdrop to this fight however starts in the anguished and disrupted home of their father Paddy, an alcoholic on the mend, approaching a thousand days of sobriety. His drunken, violent past sets the stage for three battles for Brendan and Tommy—one with their father, one with each other, and of course, the one in the ring, with $5 million on the line (though it feels like an afterthought compared to what’s at stake for them personally). It’s a deeply personal fight, among some truly phenomenal and riveting fights in this film, packed with so much anguish and raw emotion that you’re bound to be left in tears when it’s all said and done. 

We get a stellar cast as well, starring Kurt Angle, Kevin Dunn, Bryan Callen, Jennifer Morrison, Frank Grillo, Nick Nolte, Tom Hardy, and Joel Edgerton. Man, Hardy and Edgerton are both so passionately heartbreaking here, putting in some of the most intense and physical performances of their career, and they’re only bolstered by a truly tortured showing out of Nolte, who genuinely makes you feel for the regretful father after everything.  

Warrior, directed by Gavin O’Conner, is one of those underdog sports stories that will forever transcend its genre, with a powerful story that shows how sometimes, the world's hardest battles are nothing in comparison to the troubles of a scarred family.

9.5/10