Warrior
2011 Directed by Gavin O'Connor
Synopsis
Fight for Family
An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy) returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path toward the title prize, his brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family. Even though years have passed, recriminations and past betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father. But when Brendan's unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense winner-take-all battle of their lives.
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This film has no right to be as good as it is. It is predictable, it is about guys beating each other up, it is a testosterone filled fight film with all the subtelty of a freight train and it is unbelievably melodramatic.
Yeah, whatever, this film (wait for it, there's an incredible pun coming) knocked me out cold.
Films like this don't need to be groundbreaking, they need to be engaging. If Rocky was someone you couldn't root for, that movie would have been awful. The strength of Warrior is drawn from a love/hate triangle that is acted to a standard not often seen in films like this.
Tom Hardy plays damaged goods really well. He is a force…
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On paper it sounded terrible and in truth the director didn’t instill a great deal of confidence either, but despite it hitting all the familiar story beats for this type of film I found it a moving and exhilarating experience. Warrior plays out exactly how you expect it to but this can be said about practically every fight film ever made. The inevitability and the triumph over insurmountable odds is one of the great cinematic treats the ‘genre’ has to offer and Warrior does this final showdown better than most.
Moving the action from the boxing ring to the MMA cage works wonders. Bar the indifferent Redbelt there really haven’t been too many cage based movies of note and Warrior…
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I really wanted to see this on the cinema and missed it. I hate it when that happens. The one thing I didn't want this to be was a modern version of rocky. I love that movie, but there is a time and place for it, that was the eighties.
Tom hardy and nick nolte are both great. The former once again pulling off a flawless American accent and completely delving and enveloping himself in the role, both physically and mentally. However, the biggest standout was Joel edgerton who excelled. Especially in the second half of the film. At the end his performance "in he cage" isn't just one of physicality but you feel every emotion he is feeling. An…
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What an absolute masterpiece. A tremendous good MMA movie. Great story and the characters are deep and believable.
I think the fighting is not only about the fighting. It is the physical representation of the struggle between Tommy, Brendan and the father. The struggle to forgive and to move on with their lives.
A must see for everyone.
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This is one of my favorite films of all time, my number one for Top 10 2011, and best sports film. It has a special place in my heart. This is the best adaption of Mixed Martial Arts, it isn't Undisputed II or II, it isn't Never Back Down. It isn't just solely focused on MMA, it has a deeply affecting story to go with it. It's this generation's Rocky. It has a special place in my heart, seriously it does. It's a film that I watch sometimes in need of a MMA-Film fix or to relax after a day of training. I plan on opening up my Own MMA training Center here in California and possibly taking up a…
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“I Love You! I Love You Tommy!”
-Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton)Dada duh…dada duh…dada duh…dada duh…dada duh duh duhda…
Gonna fly now…No! No! This is not Rocky. Not at all. (Who am I kidding, it’s just Rocky with Tom and Joel!) No. It’s definitely not Rocky.
Do you know what? I’d actually say I preferred this to Rocky (Preparing myself for a beating right now). I won’t claim it’s a better film, but as to which I’d rather watch, it’d be Warrior. Maybe because I don’t really like Stallone. Or maybe because Tom Hardy’s my new hero beside Bill Murray. I don’t know.
What I do know, however, is that Warrior is an excellent film, the new Rocky for…
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Great sports film with a strong emphasis on family.
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Awesome movie, lots of energy, I was completely engaged and it's a long movie but I didn't even notice while watching it, the concept is really interesting in the abstract, it's two rags to riches movies in one and at the end you really have a conflict on which one to root for. The action is great and the emotion is there with some very interesting characters that have multi-layered feelings and conflicts, that combined with some great acting elevate the movie far higher than expected.
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Predictable and cliché-ridden but very thrilling. The Army part was bit too much for my taste but the actors are very convincing and the fights well choreographed and shot.
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Not much to say about this one. Typical boxing movie. Strong story.
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Warrior is an ambitious drama, which in this case is sort of a less cynical way of saying “Oscar bait.” There are some great performances, but the story isn’t told well, even though it could have been.
Brendan (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) went their separate ways when their parents divorced in their teen years: Tommy went with his mother while Brendan went with his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte). Years later, all of them estranged, both Brendan and Tommy decide to get back into mixed martial arts at the same time, Tommy training with his father out of reluctance. The two enter a major competition and work their way to the top as they finally are forced to…
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The action in O'Connor's Warrior is pretty enjoyable and the director does a decent job of creating tension and excitement around the fights. Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Morrison worked well together as husband-and-wife-on-the-financial-ropes Brendan and Tess. Both Edgerton and Hardy were in excellent condition and Hardy's barely contained rage/turmoil as he stalks at break point around the screen was almost as viscerally felt out of the fight scenes as it was in them.
Frank Grillo in support as Brendan's friend/trainer Frank Campana was another plus.Despite all these positives - which admittedly do keep the film pretty viewable overall - O'Connor and team can't write or construct a decent drama. They lucked out in Edgerton who engenders sympathy but the…
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Warrior wasn't a film I thought I would like, and until about half way through I remained convinced it wasn't for me. But Warrior is surprisingly emotional, and that's because it manages to be engaging. This is done through the two leads, with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton both giving fantastic performances and their characters being believable.
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Het zal wel altijd een tikkeltje unfair zijn, maar 'Warrior' zal wel altijd genoemd worden als het kleine broertje van dat andere boksdrama ‘The fighter'. Zulke boutade mag dan kort door de bocht lijken, toch vallen beide films meer op door hun gelijkenissen dan door hun verschillen: twee broers die zich door middel van loutering terug naar de top knokken, het decor van een verpauperde voorstad die ten prooi viel van de recentste economische malaise en een intensiteit die als een stormram door het witte doek beukt. Maar toch is ‘Warrior' een film die kan steunen op zijn eigen merites.
‘Warrior' volgt de lijdensweg van twee broers. Tommy (rijzende ster Tom Hardy) is een deserteur die na zijn dienst aan…
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NICK NOLTE steals the whole movie and gives an award worthy performance; this film is unfocused, very long but with enough worthy scenes to overshadow those small problems.