
Starring: Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte, Kurt Angle
Directed by: Gavin O’ Connor
Today, I decided to go to the mall to check out the movie, “Warrior”. Here is my review…
Plot/Synopsis: Ex-Marine, Tommy Conlon (Hardy) returns home to Pittsburgh, from serving the country, and he enlists his father (Nolte) to help train him for a big MMA tournament where the winner gets $5,000,000. However, Tommy, and his father don’t get along because his father is a recovering alcoholic and their family is about to fall apart.
While Tommy focuses on getting into fighting, his brother, Brendan Conlon (Edgerton), is a school teacher and he’s in a financial ruin with his family. Brendan wants back into fighting so he can have the money to care for his family who is also about to fall apart. The two Conlon brothers must go face to face in the tournament to fight for the prize of a lifetime.
If you like sports films and if you’re a fan of MMA/UFC, then you’re definitely going to love this movie. Also, this movie isn’t just for sports and MMA fans. This movie can be enjoyed by everyone. This movie is more than just about MMA and cage fighting. It can be about family life and things that can happen for real. This film wants to give you insight on what it’s like being an MMA fighter. Some may think the MMA lifestyle is easy and fun, but this film wants to show you it can be difficult. Families can fall apart because of your fighting lifestyle and your life can get ruined very quickly as well, just like that. This film also wants to show you that fighting can bring out the positive things about your life as well.
This is a perfect film over all. It was very intelligently written. The acting of the cast was phenomenal. Especially Nick Nolte who I was most impressed with. I think Nick Nolte deserves the Oscar nod for Best Supporting actor for this role and I have a feeling he might get one. His acting was very powerful in this movie.
This film has so much different emotions. It can be sad at times, there are scenes where it makes you pissed off, and the fighting scenes just make you want to jump up and cheer. The fighting scenes were great. I was even impressed with Kurt Angle, who is an Olympic gold medalist wrestler, and former WWE star/current TNA star. Kurt Angle didn’t talk at all in the movie. Kurt Angle plays one of the fighters who Tom Hardy fights in the movie.
I was completely blown away and in awe about this film. This film is definitely 10x’s better than, “The Fighter”, starring Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg. “Warrior” is even better than “The Wrestler” starring Mickey Rourke. I’d say “Warrior” is the best sports movie since the Rocky series.
I must warn you though, that “Warrior” didn’t have a lot of fighting in this movie and there’s a good reason for that too. Like I said before, it wanted to show you the life of a fighter outside of a cage. I think that’s the whole point of this movie. Real life MMA fighters like in Strikeforce and UFC, live their lives the similar way it is shown in this movie. All they do is train, fight, and live their lives with their families. Fighters are just normal people like us. It’s what they do for a living because that’s all they have. A lot of fighters can’t get jobs and have a hard time making money to survive, so they fight in a cage to survive.
This movie is very inspiring and I would definitely say this is the best movie of 2011 so far. Whether you’re into MMA or not, you gotta check this movie out. You’ll understand this sport better, when you do.
Score for “Warrior” (**** “4 stars” as in “excellent”)
Kev