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Plot

In the elite "Sparta" tournament's "cage," two brothers who haven't spoken in 15 years come face to face again. Although for very different motives, both compete for the prize money. The share a past filled with misery and secrets from which they have each found their own ways to recover. Tommy, the crazed ex-marine, unexpectedly comes back at his father's former-alcoholic home, asking him to train him. While renowned physics professor and mild-mannered Brendan finds himself entangled in the real estate bubble that led to the US's entry into the global economic crisis in 2008.
He needs to start fighting again in MMA if he wants to save his expensive home. Naturally, this costs him a suspension from work and a brief separation from his lovely wife Tess. The two boys struggled mightily to triumph in the ring while their abusive father tries to reconstruct its relationship with them.

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Why you should watch it?

Sometimes it is simpler to describe a movie by what it is not: "Warrior" is not a martial arts movie or a movie about social redemption through sports, two genres that are dear to American cinema but have already said everything they can say, despite still producing excellent films like "The Fighter." As surprising as these assertions may appear, after seeing the movie you'll discover that Gavin O'Connor has carried on where he left off with "Pride and Glory" (2008), which was an examination of family dynamics set in incredibly strange circumstances disguised as a genre movie.

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Warrior starts out as a gloomy drama about a family that is no longer a family and is slaving in separate microcosms that disregard one another, but it gradually turns into a sports movie with its rituals, regulations, and occasionally clumsy and rhetorical winks. However, Warrior has a fantastic speed, and these two movies are merely a logical extension and development of one another. The savagery of its climactic meetings explodes in a location so different from the squalor of the protagonists' home in the post-industrial suburbs between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, where it starts off as sleepy and apathetic as its protagonists. Real life and the dream of another existence are on two separate planes.

If there is one thing truly effective within the film, it is the acting performances of the three leads.

• Nick Nolte is first and foremost, with his solemn, sorry, and dejected expression. The actor is able to convey all the shame and helplessness that define his father figure in his stillness. Nolte gives us a well-balanced portrayal that displays his conflict between his "being" and his "should be"; he is tense but not irascible, serious but never serious.

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• Brendan Conlon, played by Joel Edgerton, is a different story. He has the calmest, most pleasant, and most approachable personality of all the characters. He almost seems to take a hint from the character Edgerton himself played in the stunning Animal Kingdom. They actually each stand for the "reasonable and transparent sharing" of two damaged families. The brother we want and should bet on is Brendan, just like his college students do.

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• But Tom Hardy is literally the whole movie. We witness a more open-hearted and sincere Hardy in a part that assisted in resurrecting his career. In Tommy Conlon's physique, which is a somewhat cryptic and impenetrable killing machine, he actually succeeds in portraying features of enormous fragility. He does a fantastic job of creating a contrast between his physically strong appearance and the glance that reveals his humanity and inner self.

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Conclusion

Warrior as a whole is an excellent film, which I definitely recommend you see. But of course it is not a perfect film and there are some things that could have been improved. One for example is the too much predictability that it carries from beginning to end, both at the level of the plot (which is quite clear both in content and motivation after the first 20 minutes) and also at the level of the fights, which although very beautiful to watch turn out to have very similar dynamics.

Rating

My personal vote is:

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8.0/10

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