Sandell Stangl: Did you know that there were three movie titles with "The Warrior" when I did an imdb search?
Joshua Efron: That's why this movie was just titled "Warrior" in order to avoid any confusion.
Sandell Stangl: I just wish they could have picked a better title for this movie. The Warrior? Really? Did that take all of five minutes to come up with? Next thing you know they'll release a movie called "The Fighter" - oh wait they did.
Joshua Efron: To speak on the title's behalf, there is a lot of Warrior-ing going on in this movie, and the majority of it is outside a fighting ring. The elder brother is warrioring to keep his home, in which he places his value as a father and husband, from being repossessed. The younger brother was warrioring both (formerly) as a marine and currently in the face of his challenges for his own personal reasons. The brothers' father meanwhile warriors both against the person he once was and in order to rekindle his relationship with his sons.
Joshua Efron: Oh, and also they punch and fight but the movie is at its best when it's not dealing with that.
Joshua Efron: And its best is pretty good.
Sandell Stangl: Isn't that ironic too? That this movie is at its best when they're not punching each other in a ring? I do think this was a good movie. One thing I liked about it is the fact that it didn't start off as a sports movie. "The Warrior" didn't becoming a boxing movie until 25 minutes in.
Sandell Stangl: And when it finally became one, it transitioned into being a boxing movie in a good way.
Joshua Efron: I don't think it transitioned from being a personal drama into a sports film until well after that, when the major tournament started. But I will say that once it became a sports movie is when the film started to have problems.
Joshua Efron: Until the international MMA (mixed martial arts) tournament the brothers enter for prize money finally starts, the film remains a very personal drama about the three/four characters involved (the brothers, the father, and the older brother's wife). Once the hyped, super-event tournament enters the movie, the film doesn't know what to do. It spends half the time personal and the other half "talking like a sports movie", complete with flybys of Atlantic City crowds and announcers having conversations about the fighters.
Joshua Efron: The narration, and the purpose of the audience member changes. The entire time we've been close and personal and now suddenly we're seeing things well outside the vision of the characters. It's jarring, and the content, which until now has rightfully ignored the spectacle of the tournament (precisely -because- the characters don't care about the tournament except as a means to an end) is now suddenly focusing on it in a hype-us-up sports-movie feel-the-weight way.
Joshua Efron: Which would be fine if the film executed the now large-scale narrative in a way to specifically contrast to the protagonists' considerations, but instead it is done without regard to the characters. I don't remember if the announcers direct address the audience as theoretical tournament viewers while they are on screen, but hearing their announcements while doing flybys of Atlantic City spectacle breaks the narration in a similar way.
Joshua Efron: You know, that works fine in Happy Gilmore and even other dramatic movies that are Sports Movies, but everything with the protagonists is Personal Drama, not Sports Film.
Sandell Stangl: I think the movie was just trying to use the tournament as a way to raise the stakes of the drama. This type of stake-raising idea is too common among film makers. It's like they think "Hey, if show a bunch of exciting stuff happening that means that the movie gets exciting for the viewer, right?" However, these characters don't care about the tournament. So why should I?
Joshua Efron: I still feel that the drama within the tournament is mostly successful even if it is weakened by the alteration of focus. In fact, in some ways it manages to blend the two strangely successfully. Despite the advertising for the film telling us that the two brothers would meet in the final match, all the matches leading up to the final still managed to be tense and exciting.
Joshua Efron: In fact, several of the people next two me were quite literally on the edge of their seat. It's remarkable that the film manages to pull this off considering that we know the brothers win these matches. Part of it comes from the utter domination the younger brother shows in the ring contrasted with the very challenging time the older brother has, particularly while facing in the semi-final the man predicted to win the entire tournament. It works Really Well. And then the last bout occurs, but I don't want to get in to that. Yet.
Sandell Stangl: I love watching people in a theater get excited like that, even if a lot of them are idiots who like crap (Transformers). It reminds me why I like to make movies for people. You are right, the drama was kept up nicely at this point in the movie. I did care about the brothers as their goals and characters were nicely done. It just felt weird not caring about the tournament as a whole.
Joshua Efron: I'm going to keep harping on the mistakes this movie made because it was a good movie that was very close to being a lot better. We had a well performed story about a handful of characters who, due to things inside and outside their control, are in difficult situations and have to make conflicted choices in resolving them. And then the second half begins and while doesn't fall apart, it stops moving forward, and not just because of the shift towards being a sports film. The two "big scenes" in the film - the character climaxes short of what was supposed to be the "real climax" in the ring were not successful the way the movie needed them to be.
Joshua Efron: The first of these two scenes was between the brothers on the eve of the finals. The two estranged brothers met in a field and expressed their difficulties with one another, each blaming the other for things that happened before their mother fled their abusive father. The problem is, the scene, while decent, doesn't congeal into setting up their final confrontation properly. The second scene in question functions as the climax between the younger brother and their reformed father, and should be the scene that either makes new revelations or forces character choices or changes - and in one way it does force their father to make a choice - but the scene is nothing more than the same berating we've seen the younger brother give their father the entire film. It does nothing we haven't already seen, and it also fails when held in relation to the climax between the two of them.
Joshua Efron: With the personal drama of the film failing to add up just before the brothers fight, the climactic battle between the two, it is Not tense and is Not dramatic. It in fact feels awkward.
Sandell Stangl: It's the fight we've been waiting for, the only one that we didn't know the outcome of, the only one that REALLY mattered! Oh cruel irony...
Joshua Efron: Whereas through most of the movie the brothers have seemed equal protagonists, by the film's climax the younger brother seems to be painted the antagonist to the older, and no where do we see or feel this shift Happen. And in the final scene.... Well, I won't belabor the issue much more for you (although an essay on this problem with the movie could easily be written), but the end doesn't work. It's not Bad, but compared to the tension provided by the film up until this point, both as a drama and action/sports film, the ending is a disappointment, and one that could have been avoided.
Joshua Efron: That being said, the movie was a pleasant success to a degree I had not expected. Up until and even through the muddlement I enjoyed it, and I left wanting to both call my sibling and punch somebody, and isn't that what the movie was aiming for?
Sandell Stangl:Yup, I think it's very fair to say that this movie was a success.
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