Warrior

[Taco-Calamitous]

Saw this tonight with my two bros. I remember ESPN talking it up a lot in the Fall, and wondering if it could actually be that good...

The story is about two estranged brothers who begin training for MMA fighting. One of the brothers-Brendan-is a High School Teacher with two daughters, who faces foreclosure on his house. The other-Tommy-is kind of mysterious, but seems to have a really checkered past, and was a soldier in Iraq. Their father is a recovered alcoholic who used to abuse both them and their mother I believe, but the dude who was a soldier goes to him to be his trainer. At the end of the movie, the two brothers face off for a 5 million dollar purse... who will be victorious?!

I really liked it. I thought they did a good job of making both the brothers and the father sympathetic. You felt for all of them, even though the father was an abusive bastard before, and Tommy is a ****. The father is remorseful and tries throughout the movie to make up to his sons, and Tommy went through a hell of a lot in his life, and he has almost as much a reason to be fighting as his brother. Brendan, however, is by far the most sympathetic, and he plays the traditional underdog, whereas Tommy just kind of goes in and destroys everybody he fights.

I think one of the big complaints people have about the movie is that there are some unrealistic elements. One being that they both end up in a 16 man tournament for the top fighters in the world as two nobodies. Another is how well Brendan does

Spoiler: (he wins it all-even against his brother, who was knocking people out with like one punch).

I didn't mind that, though. I thought it was really emotional, and that the main characters were very well developed. Great acting too, especially by Nick Nolte (who plays the father.) I might have to edit this back into the best and worst of 2011. Anyhoo...

Wuv, Yer Mom

[Xanatos]

I've seen it twice so far, first time all by myself, second time with my friend who I constantly nagged to see this movie. As you can probably guess from that, I really, really like it. Shame though I've only seen it after making my "best and worst of 2011" thread, otherwise this movie would have TFF stamp as the best movie I've seen that year.

I really like this twisted family "love" story told through out the entire movie, and even though you can hardly relate to any of them, as Telegraph said, it's easy to sympathize with the main characters. I was impressed with how well the entire cast performed, especially Tom Hardy who I like more and more with every new movie he appears in. I on the other hand was kinda disappointed with this in my opinion stupid trend of underdog always managing to pull off a win in the end.