The poster for Warrior tells you most of what you need
to know about the movie. Two guys
who appear to know their way around a hypodermic needle are going to
fight. One of them’s probably the
bad guy, and one of them’s probably the good guy. There’s gonna be a training montage, and someone’s going to
look to a woman in the audience for inspiration.
For the most part,
you’d be right. Nevertheless, Warrior steps enough outside that mold
to keep itself interesting, and it delivers a fine montage, great fights, and
enough of an emotional wallop to choke me up at the end. See, the fighters are brothers. With issues. They bond. I’m
a sucker for that kind of thing.
Yes, yes, yes. We’ve seen a number of the story elements
a million times. And really, how
do you do anything new with a shot of supporters back home cheering at their
television sets? But hey, I liked
these people all the same. I cared
about them and I cared who won the big fight, and why, and how. Warrior is a perfectly respectable
entry in the “fight movie” catalogue.
