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We saw Warrior, about two brother, separated by family troubles, but reunited by fate in a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighting ring...
Nick Nolte is their alcoholic father, who both gave them the gift of training them both to fight and the curse of a broken family and abuse...
This is both main actors, Joel Edgerton, ( minor roles in King Arthur and Ned Kelly) and Tom Hardy ( starring in TV adaption of Wuthering Heights and minor role in Inception) , first big role and neither has a MMA background and had to go through intense training for the roles and bulk up. Also neither actor is even American, let alone from the tough working class of Pennsylvania, where the movie was filmed and set. Edgerton is an Aussie and Hardy is English.
I wasn't expecting much out of a fight movie, but was pleasantly surprised. Warrior was very engaging and emotional in the story of the family as much as in the action packed fight scenes. A Rocky for the new millennium.
It was refreshing to see a realistic movie of how family battles can last past childhood and into adulthood and in divorce and abuse, the siblings might pull together the older children protecting the younger, more often than not, the siblings take a "everybody for themselves" survival stance and when they grow up, go their separate ways.
The break up of any family has long lasting ramifications and this movie did a wonderful job of showing that, how two brothers would find themselves on two totally different paths, Edgerton, a family man and high school teacher. Hardy, the younger brother, literally wandering the world and full of rage and hate for his father and his brother, but ultimately still coming back and asking his father to train him.
A child of two divorces, I so understand the back and forth pull of wanting to go back and make things right and also wanting to just say "to hell" with those you left behind and move forward. I don't know if we will ever take the time to tally up the damage broken homes are truly doing to this country, there seems to be more pressing problems and most don't realize how much the destruction of the "core family" is the start to such problems.
MMA is not something most are familiar with, or has a "bad boy" reputation. But since both my daughters are trained in Kenpo Karate, I was trying to get them to do piano lessons, but they picked Karate and my oldest is a Third Degree Brown, one down from a Black, I am more familiar with it than I would have ever imaged!
A combination of traditional boxing and marital arts, where not only punches are thrown, but kicks, and ground work are also allowed. The sport, like all boxing and martial arts fighting is all about excitement so the bouts are fought inside a chain like fenced ring.
Of course there is a dark side to this sport, no argument, but what I have learned since we have do a bit of traveling to Sante Fe and Las Vegas, where Kenpo Black and Brown Belts converge every summer from all over the world..
is most of these guys are huge teddy bears- I have never been around a more "huggy" bunch of men in my life, who could also rip your arm off, if they wanted to!
