Warrior

• Full Review
• Trailer
• Tickets

Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama
• Release Date: 2011-09-04 Sneaks
• Running Time: 139 min.
• Director: Gavin O'Connor
• Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, Kurt Angle, Kevin Dunn, Bryan Callen, Jennifer Morrison, Jake McLaughlin, Frank Grillo, Liam Ferguson
• Producer: Greg O'Connor
• Writer: Gavin O'Connor, Anthony Tambakis, Cliff Dorfman
• Distributor: Lionsgate
• Official Site: Warrior Official Site

You know those Affliction shirts, covered in skulls, gothic lettering, and tribal patterns, all cacophonous symbols of badass machismo? That's what the Mixed Martial Arts tie-in movie Warrior is—an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink firesale of male-weepie tropes, awesome in its thoroughness. The collective dream of authentic blue-collar American grubbiness lives on in a Pittsburgh row house, where long-estranged son Tommy (Tom Hardy), just back from a tour with the marines, visits his recovering alcoholic dad Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tommy can't forgive the old man for breaking up the family, but needs a trainer for his nascent MMA career. In Philadelphia, Tommy's older brother, Brendon (Joel Edgerton), a physics teacher and family man who has likewise broken ties with his past, gets back in the fighter's octagon to keep the bank from repossessing his house. The announcement of a tournament-style championship contest sets the brothers on a collision course to a family reunion in the cage. Old line-gargler Nolte remains an effortlessly moving presence, while Hardy and Edgerton embody their archetypes and handle the physical demands. With a silverback strut and the neck of a '30s-mural prole, Hardy does Method brooding, while Edgerton underplays with integrity in a film that spends its last hour piling climax on top of climax, holding the audience in an emotional arm bar.