Warrior

8 / 10

Accompanied by an epic version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, this is an excellently well-crafted sports drama taking place in the realms of MMA and follows the effective formula for tense main event fights: A feud between two brothers, emotional stakes through a war trauma on one side and an imminent bankruptcy due to the lack of income on the other, and the sports’ biggest tournament with a prize pool huge enough to get rid off all the monetary problems – but not the psychological ones. The story’s essence about a personally divided family is nowhere near groundbreaking, but contains very good performances from Tom Hardy as the traumatized Iraq veteran Tommy Riordan, Joel Edgerton as the physics teacher Brendan Conlan who has to step into the shoes of an underground kickboxer in order to cover the bills for his family and last, but not least, their redemption-seeking father, former alcoholic and long-retired wrestling coach Paddy Conlan played by Nick Nolte.

But the main attraction and strength of Warrior lies in the relentless action sequences with a menacing presence from the protagonists and the intensity from their exchange of blows serving as a catalyst for the compensation of losing a friend in a war or the struggling battle inside the financial jungle. Although a restructuring of the bracket in favor of a balanced road to the final would have been appreciated and a slight imbalance of the stakes becomes apparent, Gavin O’Connor shows that any fight in sports entertainment or action films can get someone on the edge of the seat with the correct build-up, meaningful consequences for both parties in case of a loss and a beautiful culmination of both character arcs with The National’s About Today.