The Fighter (2010)

Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) is a hero of Lowell, Massachusetts, having fought Sugar Ray Leonard and knocked him down. While Dicky prepares for his "comeback," his younger brother, Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg), is on the rise. Dicky is a crack junkie and can't really handle any serious affairs, and Mickey, with the help of his new girlfriend Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), must eventually decide to leave behind his family to seriously concentrate on his career. Can he make it on his own, or does he really need the help of his unreliable older brother?

Russell starts off using an interesting idea, as an HBO documentary crew follows around the older brother Dicky, but halfway through the documentary is finished and this gimmick is no longer needed; the movie becomes fairly standard. However, while Russell can't find much of anything new or strange to say, he still manages an emotionally complex drama, filled with rich characters and tough decisions. Not everything is clear or easy in this movie, and it comes in a good deal deeper and thornier than The Hurricane, Ali or Cinderella Man, even if it's less masterful than Raging Bull. It's perhaps a little too indebted to the true story, although the performances are uniformly excellent.