Fight scenes are hard to do well, and the fight scenes in Warrior are awesome.
Four rounds of tournament fighting could easily get tedious, but the pace is perfect. Not only that, We always know what’s going on, which is my biggest problem with the fast-paced shaky cam fighting we see in the Bourne Identity.
Moreover, we see the different personalities in the way the brothers fight. Tommy punches people’s lights out (Wait. Isn’t he supposed to be a WRESTLING champion? Never mind). Brendan uses timing, resilience, and his intelligence to take advantage of opportunities; all his victories come from submission holds, which a jiu jitsu lover like me. Tommy dominates people. Brendan does not dominate, he catches you off guard and turns the tables.
The fights themselves are great. Two of Brendan’s fights in particular--his debut match and the Koba battle--are so emotionally engaging you wonder how the movie is going to top them with the finals.
The fight scenes in the second half propel the movie out of the hole it digs itself into in the first half. But it also leaves one wondering: why couldn’t the dramatic scenes have the same sense of direction, economy, and clarity as the fights?
Take Tommy and Brendan‘s scene on the beach. It’s Tommy and Brendan’s first and only conversation, and it should hit us hard. It doesn’t. The performances are fine, but it feels like the dialogue is meandering, and the scene itself is visually uninteresting. Many of the early scenes, including Pop’s apperance on Brendan’s porch, and even Tommy and Pops’ opening scene feel the same way. There‘s a lot there, everything is there, but it isn’t quite…put together.
But let’s go away from that, and back to the reason I started this essay series in the first place.
Many, many words ago I talked about two-heroes in a competition only one man can win and the problems therein.
Like Cabin in the Woods or The Prestige, Warrior has its protagonists working at cross-purposes, leaving me ambivalent about who I want to succeed. I was confused, but assumed the movie was playing it straight. We were supposed to be torn between rooting for Brendan and rooting for Tommy.
Which was why it was a total surprise when I saw the semi-final brackets. Brendan would be facing the Russian Koba. Tommy would be facing…the same guy he beat up in the gym ten minutes into the movie.
That doesn’t make sense dramatically, unless….unless they’re going to have Koba take out Brendan--the weaker brother--in the semis and then meet Tommy in the finals. Tommy wins and redeems himself by giving the money to his estranged brother.
Which sort of works, but also borders on a cheat. We were never explicitly promised a Tommy-Brendan fight--Tommy and Brendan have only shared one scene so far and they don’t even talk about the fight--but it still feels like ducking
Except that as one of the filmmakers tells us in the director’s commentary: “Tommy has to lose to win, and Brendan has to win to win.”
Once that’s clear, the movie starts to fall into place.
None of the other plots I complained about seem to matter all that much. None of the people in Brendan’s life seem to matter. Even Frank’s voice fades away over the course of the fight
Brendan needs to win to win and Tommy needs to lose to win.
The crowd noise goes away. The announcers--who up until now have served as a pugilistic Greek chorus-- have only one line and that comes at the middle of the fight, when Brendan starts to fight back with relish.
We move inside the cage instead of watching from through the fence. It is the most intimate fight in the film, but also the most initmate dramatic scene. Instead of watching dispassionately from a distance, the camera crowds into the cage with the two brothers.
None of the other plots matter. It’s just the two of them, Brendan and Tommy alone in deep waters where no one else can follow.
