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Created Sep 17, 2011 01:16PM PST • Edited Sep 23, 2022 11:08PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   MMA gets its 15 minutes of movie fame in Warrior, reason enough for mixed-martial arts fans to revere it. For the rest of us? Reason to avoid it. Most movie fans in Silicon Valley apparently fall in the latter camp, judging from the near empty Camera 7 theater on opening night.

   Pity, because Warrior is a surprisingly great movie, kind of an ensemble Rocky. Ole’ Sly Stallone himself would appreciate Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton’s athletic performances, especially with Hardy playing a veritable Rocky Tyson, MMA variety. Add in a truly great Nick Nolte performance as their Dad and you’ve got three male leads for the ages, what with Edgerton and Hardy each on the cusp of huge stardom.

   The surprise is that Warrior succeeds as a family movie,¹ this family in need of lots of forgiveness from each other. IOW, they’ve each wounded one another, making all of them … wounded. Tough Irish-Americans, they dish out punishment and take a punch better than most.

   Manipulative and mercenary, Warrior succeeds better than it should but not as much as its creator Gavin O’Connor probably expected.
   -—————

   ¹ about a family, not appropriate for the family, to be clear.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   The movie stars Nick Nolte as sire to Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy, three hunky moviestars for the ages. Edgerton and Hardy have strong yet sensitive features, amazingly buff bodies, and each comes across as man’s man who women love. In short, they have the package of leading man gifts once embodied by Nolte.

   Hardy gives a Pennsylvania pug performance that is nothing less than Rocky-esque, only Hardy plays a Pittsburgh guy, whereas Sly’s creation was pure Philly. Unlike Stallone the Yank, Hardy’s a Brit, making his acting all the more impressive.

   Hardy has tremendous screen presence, as his scene stealing performance in Inception proved. I can’t wait to see him next year in Mad Max: Fury Road and The Dark Knight Rises. After those blockbusters, he could enter 2013 as a $20 million per picture megastar.

   Edgerton seems set as the next Aussie actor to become a huge Hollywood star. Russell Crowe, make way. He plays an enormously appealing character in Warrior, a high school physics teacher with a gorgeous family and an underdog’s fighting spirit. In short, he’s got the ability to play action and real drama. Like Hardy, he’s not American but comes across as if native to the Keystone State.

   Edgerton first appeared on my radar screen in last year’s Animal Kingdom, after which I dubbed him a future matinee idol. Next month he stars in the remake of The Thing and next year in The Great Gatsby alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Seems he’s arrived.

   Jennifer Morrison plays his MILFy wife. How hot is she? She was part of Angelina Jolie’s ultrababe posse in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Turns out she can also act and can de-glam too. Great talent.

   Nick Nolte gives one his better recent performances as a newly sober drunk trying to move past a lifetime of awful behavior. Like his cinematic sons, Nolte’s the rare action star who’s also a first rate actor.

   Other notables:

   • Frank Grillo plays a charismatic boxing coach.
   • Kevin Dunn plays a put-upon high school principal.
   • Vanessa Martinez plays a sympathetic Iraq War widow.
   • Noah Emmerich plays a soulless loan officer.
   • Gavin O’Connor, the movie’s writer and director, plays the hedge fund kingpin behind a jackpot MMA tournament.

   Several real MMA stars have cameos, which will be of more than passing interest to cage fighting fans.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

   Edgerton & Hardy

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

   Nolte

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    This highly manipulative film is full of pithy, essential dialog in service to a mercenary plot about the mercenary sport of prize fighting. You gotta hand it to Gavin O’Connor, Warrior’s writer, director and cameo-playing Hedge Fund Promoter: He’s crafted a tremendously well shot and well conceived film, even if it is overtly designed to play on male heartstrings.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play OK 2.5

    Mercenary as hell. Perfectly hard boiled, but so what. Mercenary is mercenary.

13. Music Great 4.0

    Beethoven rarely gets this kind of macho exposure. Ode to Joy?

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    The film’s visuals are perfectly drawn, from Tom Hardy’s pronounced traps, to Joel Edgerton’s pronounced cheekbones, to the acrobatic cage moves, to an Iraqi fire-base, to prosaic Pittsburgh, to the beach at Atlantic City.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    MMA fighting action – arm bars, punching downed men, dislocated shoulders, the whole shooting match.

    Hard feelings from a family that hurts each other, some through drinking, some through fighting.

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

    Hollywood is a left-wing town partly because movies naturally favor underdogs put upon by The Man. Warrior plays this card to the hilt.

    For instance, one tremendously sympathetic character is in danger of losing his house to a heartless bank. Doesn’t matter that the guy is a schoolteacher (high school physics no less) who did a cash-out refi to pay his baby daughter’s medical bills for an apparent heart defect. A pasty-faced bank officer pushes bankruptcy. If Gavin O’Connor plucked any more heartstrings, he could play a Stradivarius left-handed.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.6

23. Biological Glib 1.8

24. Physical Glib 1.5