THE FIGHTER

Oh brother, here we go again!  Another rags-to-riches boxing story.  It was produced by the director of BLACK SWAN and THE WRESTLER, so I was expecting it to be really dark.  It wasn't.  I was expecting another ROCKY.  It wasn't.  In short, I had low expectations for THE FIGHTER, and that just may be why I liked it so much.
You already know how it ends. . . right?   Everyone who goes into the theater knows how this movie is going to end.  But that's not what the movie is about.  It's about what it takes to get to the final outcome, and the unusual obstacles that are all along the way.
Most of all, this movie is about family, and the love and loyalty that comes with it.
Two brothers, Mickey and Dicky Ward grew up as the only two brothers in a family of nine children.  They had an army of seven whacky sisters, a domineering mother, Alice and a sort of in-the-background father, George.
Dicky, the older brother had an extremely brief moment in the spotlight when, several years earlier, he "knocked down" Sugar Ray Leonard and won a fight against the welterweight champion.  Dicky bragged about this accomplishment ad nauseum, convincing himself that it was a legitimate win, while the general consensus was that Sugar Ray slipped and lost the fight himself, not because Dicky was the the superior fighter.  In the years that followed, Dicky plunged into a life of a crackhead and lived in a ramshackle delapidated dump with several other crackheads.
Nevertheless, Mickey, a single guy with young daughter,  idolized Dicky and was himself training to make a name for himself in the world of boxing.  Despite Dicky's shortcomings, Mickey kept him, as well as his father, George, and the local gym owner as his trainers. His mother, Alice was his manager.  All in the family.
Even though Dicky never made it as a boxer, and although he was crack-addicted, Dicky was extremely knowledgeable about boxing and seemed to know exactly how to bring out the best in Mickey.
Another problem was that Alice wasn't the best manager and scheduled fights for Mickey based on the prize money without regard to how each fight would move him closer to a title fight.
So the family, with the army of obnoxious sisters, the crackhead brother, the milquetoast father (who, to his credit, finally stood up to Alice, to the tune of cast iron frying pans flying toward his head), was nothing short of a comedy show.  They definitely brought a nice degree of humor to an otherwise deadly serious film.  Mickey, the one everyone was so concerned about was the least dynamic of the bunch.
Oh yeah. . . .On top of all this is the bartender/girlfriend who is pushing Mickey to shed his lead-weight family, get different, more experienced supporters and have a real chance to get a belt.
Will Mickey follow the advice of his new girlfriend, and renounce his family who have worked so relentlessly and believed in him?  They were just a little misguided, but they truly wanted the best for Mickey. (Which translates to the best for themselves, too)  What's wrong with that?  Can he make it to the top with them running the show?  He finds that he must choose between them and the gym-owner, whose stipulation to train Mickey is NO DICKY and NO ALICE.  George made the cut.
All the characters in this movie really kept it going at a rapid pace.  Never boring,  I found myself rooting for  Mickey, even though I knew what was coming at the end.
But. . . .  It didn't end exactly how I thought it would.  I really liked THE FIGHTER.