WarriorMike Tyson gave an interview once where he said that his kids could never do what he did in the ring, because they haven't grown up like he did. "What my kids have at 14, I fought my whole life to get". And I don't think he just means money.
The rough upbringing of the two brothers in this film, and them being fighters, it's all easy to accept. Even the bit about one of them having become a physics teacher and then transitioning back into fighting is something that has actually happened.
Rich Franklin was a math teacher who went on to be a UFC champ.
I could nitpick the actual fighting, but movie fighting not looking real is par for the course and not always a bad thing. Anyways, that's not really where my problems lie. I think ultimately I just wasn't that invested in the characters' stories. Nick Nolte's character was who I rooted for most. Maybe he deserved it least, but I unlike Tom Hardy, he was at least pleasant to be around. Hardy's character was understandably angry, and bitter, etc, but he also didn't necessarily seem to want to change that. I dunno. He was just really hard to like to root for. And Joel Edgerton... I found his story kind of annoying in other ways. The scenes between him and his wife, and she's telling him not to fight etc, I just felt like saying to the screen "give it up, don't you realize you're in a movie? It's pointless to resist!"
A few other things put me off it. Like the principal character. He's the annoying person who shows up to a superbowl party and hasn't watched a football game in 12 years, but tries to get into it. Not the time! Anyways, the film keep cutting to insert his reactions, and I'm like, please don't.
The fact I recognized some of the background faces... people who are in the mma world directly or indirectly... like the guy who played the way over the top commentator (Bryan Callen). I listen to his podcast (The Fighter and The Kid) regularly. I know what he's really like. Also the commentary his character was given was dumb. And then in another scene Edgerton or Hardy beat up a real life MMA guy (Another "Rumble" Johnson), who's a legit nightmare. Seeing these people just kind of reminds me it's movie.
The film is weak on Nolte providing any value to Tom Hardy as trainer. Hardy's whole point of coming back to his father was strictly to get him to train him again, because "that's the only thing you did right". Fair enough, but then there's never any real training. Nolte tells him not to eat the food at the restaurant their at, since it's just a greasy spoon diner, and later he wake him up early in the morning (presumably to train), and Hardy ignores him. But that's pretty much it. There's no montage where we see Nolte's wisdom as a trainer come out, or where he gives specific fighting advice. There's no monent where Hardy trains at all from what I saw. Nolte just kind of mumbles general fight advice in the corner when Hardy is fighting, "keep your hands up", etc. Hardy doesn't even hear it. In that way, Nolte's character seems pretty unnecessary. It's just an excuse to slip him in the story, so this family drama can play out and he can be present for it.
Edgerton on the other hand has a lot of training stuff. We see him drilling, and hitting pads, and his coach is like an actual athelete himself, and not a 70 year old ex drunk we're told but not shown knows something about fighting.
Mostly it's the characters. I had a similar problem watching The Fighter, and Bleed For This. I find myself not liking the characters. Either because they are inherently unlikable, or because are likeable but keep being written to do dumb things. These modern fighting movies are tough to like. They're grittier, so their characters drink and beat women and have a million emotional problems. I miss the days of Rocky, when a fighter could just be a generally good person, poor but driven, and the point of fighting was to win, not to fix all your emotional problems or save a country or whatever else. David vs Goliath, not David vs Freud.
