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Fight movies work by giving us a hero to root for and a series of obstacles and opponents to overcome, each more devastating than the last, before culminating in a final showdown. Whether their victory is literal or, more rarely, moral, everything hinges on our identification with and sympathy for the hero. One of the more interesting aspects of Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior is that it gives us two heroes—each sympathetic, each flawed—and then asks us to choose who to root for at the end.
In one corner, we have Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy), a Marine newly returned from Afghanistan under mysterious circumstances. He’s sought out his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), who trained him to be a world-class wrestler as a boy and whose alcoholism and abuse drove Tommy and his mother away 14 years ago. Tommy makes it clear than he needs Paddy’s help to enter and win a massive mixed martial arts tournament, but that he’s neither forgotten nor forgiven his old man’s history. Paddy, just shy of 1,000 days sober, agrees, in the clear hope of a reconciliation that may never come.
In the other corner, we have Tommy’s older brother, Brendon (Joel Edgerton), who stayed behind to marry his high school sweetheart and raise his own family, one from which Paddy is determinedly excluded. Facing foreclosure on his house, Brendon starts moonlighting on his job teaching high school physics by participating in parking lot MMA matches. When one of those matches lands him on suspension from the school, Brendon convinces his old trainer to get him back into shape so that he can still earn, despite his wife’s understandable concerns for his health.
Coincidences abound to get these two men in the cage facing each other at Sparta, an open MMA tournament with a $5 million grand prize, but the family drama playing out between them and with their father elevates the film above those concerns. The two leads offer impressive performances, conveying each brother’s personality and inner struggle through his style of fighting. Hardy makes Tommy a wrecking ball of seething resentment, smashing through opponents and storming off afterwards. Edgerton’s Brendon is more cerebral, absorbing punishment while waiting for the right moment to make a move. Even their one scene together before the tournament finale is a verbal sparring match, a confused Brendon trying to reason with an unyielding and angry Tommy.
With his gravelly voice and slow-burning demeanor, Nolte adds a third amazing performance as a remorseful shell of a man who’s trying to seize this one last chance at repairing what he nearly destroyed. For all of the brutality of the sport, the emotional punches that these three men trade with each other land much harder, and the resulting wounds run much deeper.
Taken as a whole, Warrior is a hell of a ride, a mix of tense personal drama and some very impressive MMA fight work. Its unrelenting earnestness and plot contrivances may put off some viewers, but for others it’ll hook in hard until the credits roll. When the final confrontation between Tommy and Brendon arrives, it carries real weight, and the question of whose corner you’re in will be entirely up to you.
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