TCM runs some more recent films during 31 Days of Oscar, which usually gives me the chance to record that more recent stuff that I haven't seen because I don't go to the local sixtyplex that often. Another such movie that I recorded during the 2025 edition of 31 Days of Oscar was The Fighter.
The movie opens up in 1993 in Lowell, MA (the movie was filmed on location there), one of those old mill towns that is in seemingly terminal decline. A camera crew is following Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a former boxer who claims to be training for a return to the ring and who is also training his half-brother, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg). The reason Dicky's career is in decline is that he turned to crack cocaine. That addiction has also led to a divorce and Dicky not having custody of his child. It's Micky's time to shine, and in addition to being trained by his brother his career is being managed by his mother Alice (Melissa Leo). Mom has decided ideas about the importance of family and how to manage her sons' careers, and woe betide anybody who gets in the way.
Micky, after losing a hastily-arranged fight where he's asked to go up against somebody multiple weight classes above him, isn't certain what he wants to do with his career, so he goes to one of the local bars where he meets waitress Charlene (Amy Adams) and starts a relationship that going to be difficult because she sees what a bad influence his brother and mother are having on him. Meanwhile, Micky has come to the notice of some more legitimate, or at least experienced, boxing types, who are willing to pay Micky to have him train year round. This would necessitate his going to Las Vegas, and no longer having family as his trainer or manager, so you can imagine how that's going to go over with Mom.
Dicky offers to match whatever the other promoters are willing to pay Mickey. But because he has no good way to do so, he turns to illegal means, which get him in all sorts of trouble with the law, even more so when he resists arrest and fights back. And because Dicky has a long arrest record already, he gets sent straight to prison for a substantial term. Micky gets his hand broken in Dicky's arrest. After a period of soul-searching, and while Dicky is still in prison, Micky decides he's going to start training again when his hand heals well enough to fight.
Micky does indeed start training, and with the help of Charlene, gets new management who insist that Mom and brother are not involved. Brother is easy enough since he's in prison, although Mom is going to be a bit more of a problem. Micky's career gets good enough to go up against a serious jump in quality. But of course, Dicky is eventually released from prison having served his sentence, and expects that he's going to be able to return to working with the brother he loves. The Fighter being based on a true story, the movie leads up to Micky's getting a title fight for one of the lesser governing bodies' titles against a British competitor in the UK.
A lot of reviewers made the point about The Fighter, and I think I'd have to agree, that the plot of the movie is one that doesn't really break much new ground, as a lot of the tropes in terms of things you have to deal with to make it to the top show up here, in part because they show up in a lot of people's lives. Or, at least, the lives of those people whose life stories are interesting enough to make a movie about. Oppenheimer had all that difficulty with the government after the war; Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium and a bunch of heavier elements, but he didn't have an exciting personal life that would make a good movie. The point here is that for a boxing movie like The Fighter to rise above the fray it needs good acting performances. And The Fighter has that from all of its supporting actors especially, even if Mark Wahlberg isn't the greatest actor out there. The location shooting is a big plus as well. Boxing fans also point out that the fights were deliberately filmed using the same technique that HBO (which aired the originals) used and consider this a big plus. I'm not a boxing fan but the fight scenes are definitely different cinematically.
As I implied above, watch The Fighter for the stars' performances, and you'll get a very fine movie in the process.
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