The Fighter is one of those movies that’s production echoes it’s script, to the point where it’s less seconds and more months out for Marky Mark’s punishing and passionate pugilistic effort, but despite the nebulous involvement of a galaxy of stars (Matt Damon and Marty Scorcese can take a bow) it turns out to have been well worth the wait….

Many sporting flicks have an ‘underdog makes good’ tale at their core, but it’s rare that those dogs lie as low as Chrian Bale’s Dickie Eklund, a crack addicted mess, bragging about a comeback as he become’s ever more strung-out and desperate. As usual with sports films there is a glimmer of hope however -here found in the iron resolve of Dickie’s younger brother Micky Ward (The aforementioned former-Funky Buncher).

Downtrodden and exploited by the rest of his extended family and in particular a truly poisonous mother (played with true bile by Melissa Leo), Micky is a poor-to-middling middleweight, constantly taking some horrendous punishment in the ring in order to fund his awful relations.

So, terribly dysfunctional family with a former hero at their heart -sounds like it would make a great documentary doesn’t it? Enter HBO, following Bale’s creepy, crawly Dickie around as he comes apart at the seams (and neatly disposing of huge gobs of complex exposition in the process). As usual, Bale is deeply method, with skin stretched over hollow eye sockets, his now-familiar dedication to physical transformation used to startling effect.

So what? We’ve seen Bale get fat/skinny/batman before haven’t we? Is this just going to be a Rocky take-off?

*insert 'punch in balls' gag here*

Fortunately, not at all, even taking into account at least four training montages (Sadly, not one of them is set to ‘Eye of the Tiger).

Although the first act focuses heavily on Bale, there’s still time to weave in plenty of Wahlberg moments, a blossoming romance with a surprisingly rough n’ tough Amy Adams providing a soft-hearted counterpoint to some truly brutal action in the ring.

The sheer naturalism on display throughout is what makes The Fighter stand apart. The plot may be riddled with Hollywood clichés, but there’s some very genuine humanity struggling to stay on top of it, meaning this is less a ‘boy done good’ story and more ‘the boy triumphed over a really shitty upbringing.

Sure, some of the acting is overwrought. Bale becomes ever more twitchy-showy, but just (just) manages to get away with it, and frankly a few of the East Coast accents are fucking diabolical, but director David O’Russell keeps on top of things, adding enough grey realism to tamp down the majority of the ‘TV Movie of the Week’ moments and make things truly compelling.

The family may be a collection of nauseating assholes, but they’re exactly the kind of assholes you’re likely to see in any low-rent local bar, and there’s a working class humour (and a very non-working class overarching wryness) that consistently makes you warm to the sheer ridiculousness of some of the characters.

They may be shitheads, but they’d sure be fun to have a pint with.

It may be hackneyed and overly complicated, especially as we enter the final straights and there’s a multiple character pile-up, but Russell knows exactly what he’s doing, weaving in and out of the action with hand-held cameras, but never letting things get out of hand.

There’s a measured pace and a very effective refusal to revel in the more gratuitous side of the sport throughout -things get messy and painful, but never gory, something that’s partly a tribute to Wahlberg’s extreme likeability. He’s a regular, nice guy stuck in the middle of a shit storm, and you really do feel genuine sympathy for him.

Like it’s protagonist, The Fighter emerges as a champion against all odds, defying cliché to spar with the very best of them. Sure to be a heavy hitter come awards season, get yourself a front row seat early.

Ho-de-ho-ho, if it isn’t being Saint Patrick’s day ya bloody bollocks, and as a special service to our ‘Of-Irish-Descent’ readers, its time for a patronising article that has bugger all to do with Ireland (and in no way increase our readership by being blatantly confrontational and obnoxious obviously).

Time to pick up a green plastic bowler hat (just like they had in the old country that neither you nor anyone you know has ever been to), fill it with dyed green cheap whiskey (because that’s what a true Irishman would obviously do) and check out the best, definitely, positively, Of-Irish-Descent oh-yes-sir-honestly actors!

Ya feckin’ eejit.

Christian Bale

There’s nothing more Of-Irish-Descent than Batman is there? He’s a cop, working in a New York/Chicago analogue and helping out a flatfoot named Gordon. It’s to Bale’s credit that despite a penchant for growling like a bulldog a lot recently, he never once let’s the comedy accent slip. Well, Hollywood is certainly a step up from Bournemouth- top work Bale, you Of-Irish-Descent Psycho you!

Of-Irish-Descent analogue: Sam Worthington

Grunt. Roar. I am a machiiiiiinnnneeee!!!It isn’t often you see someone out-acted by their own leg muscles, But Worthington pulls it of with aplomb. We’d tell him, but he’s not allowed out of his cage between scenes. Also happens to be English, but we’ll ignore that for now…

Mel Gibson

In Lethal Weapon, Gibbo cemented his status as Hollywood’s go-to Of-Irish-descent action man, chain smoking his way through a million glorious mullet-waving action scenes, even going so far as to become violently and visibly anti-Semitic in later life- top o’ the mornin’ to ya Mel!

Of-Irish-Descent version: Bruce Willis

Wow, some one who may actually, just about, have a relative who once lived near Kilkenny! And even though McClain is actually a Scottish name rather than an Irish one, who cares, it’s all the same country outside Poughkeepsie ain’t it? Da noive a’ some peoples!

Robert Pattinson

Ah, those dark eyes, that swoon-inducing giant beehive-quiff of doom, he could only be an of-Irish-Descent rogue.Or the product of a warped imagination that had been reading too many back issues of Preacher when vampire casting week came around. Whatever, the thing they call R-Patz will be clogging up your screens in Remember Me this week, so why not heas down with a bag of green popcorn and enjoy his unique brand o’ bollicks.

Of-Irish-Descent Analogue – Taylor Lautner

He’s got the smouldering good looks down for sure. What a shame they’re buried in the tiny plastic face of a Ken doll, and married to the kind of acting skills last seen on MTV’s The Hills- A bright, Oscar-filled future awaits!

Hugh Jackman

Fist seen playing Curly in Oklahoma, it doesn’t get much more Of-Irish-Descent than a real live cowboy does it?? Jackman then hammered home his all-Of-Irish-Descent status by appearing as..erm..the Canadian Wolverine! And Leopold, Duke of Westminster! Erm…to be fair, we haven’t really thought this one through properly have we…

Of-Irish-Descent analogue: Eric Bana

Yep, this one is absolutely Of-Irish-Descent! 100% positive. Except in ‘Chopper’ obviously. And ‘The Beast’. Shite, we’re going to have to go with Treat Williams instead aren’t we?

Gary Oldman

One of the lesser species of Of-Irish-Descent thespians, Gary covers up his blatantly cockney drawl with squawking southern warblings at every available opportunity, only reverting to type as Syrius Black, but hey, that can be explained away by magic right? As Of-Irish_descent as a dyed green apple pie.

Of-Irish-Descent analogue: James Woods

Almost as adept at whispering and looking vaguely inscrutable, Woods never quite manages the ‘explosive shouting and Scotch drinking’ combo required of the true Of-Irish-Descent acting experience. Although he did once manage to shag a TV set after doing the sex with an ex-Playboy bunny, which is pretty darned close!

Well, a pretty good turn out for the Of-Irish-Descent actors today, with a massive 1 of them them actually having some measure of Blarney floating near their family to be sure! To mis-quote Phil Lynott: Is there anyone in the audience with any Irish in them tonight?

No. No there isn’t.

Fig 1: Not Wearing Any Pants Under Here....

Movie heroes – you wish you were like that right? Kicking ass and taking names? You’d be so cool wouldn’t you?
Well, actually, no you wouldn’t. You’d be a boorish dickweed.

We’re not even talking about slimy Matthew Mconaughey rom-com assholes here either, in fact it seems that the cooler you look on-screen, the more of a spaz you’d be in real life. Men hate them, women can’t wait to escape them – we consider how well your big screen archetypes would cope in real life and quickly discover they’d be useless twats…

Han Solo

Oh sure, Han seems cool doesn’t he? With his flashy spaceship, hanging out with Billy Dee Williams. But seriously, would you hire him to tarmac your driveway? He turns up wearing skinny jeans and a waistcoat-attire completely unsuitable for manual labour- with an obviously intimidating ‘friend’, and demands half the cash up front. Then as soon as the cops wander past he drops the job halfway through, and when you go to complain, he shoots you!

Tyler Durden

So, you meet this geezer on a plane and make a bit of polite chat. Hey, you’re going to be sitting together for four hours – you might as well get along right? What does this charity-shop clad underwear model do? He rips into you for making a bad joke, forces you to give him all your cash, gets you involved with criminals, and steals your girlfriend! Got a problem with that? He and his fat friends will blow up your house- actually blow it up over a difference of opinion. What an asshole.

James Bond

In he stalks, all expensive suits and hairplugs. “Fancy a beer mate?” You politely enquire. No, he wants a fucking martini. He critiques your taste, despite having none of his own – if he’s not going on about his bloody Omega watch or his Aston, it’s “that’s as bad as listening to The Beatles – without wearing earmuffs”. You grin and bear it until he leaves, which he does – by kicking a hole in your kitchen window after drowning your French exchange student in the kitchen sink. Let’s face it, he’s a complete cock.

Bruce Wayne

“Oh, I don’t think finding a table for me and the two Eastern European prostitutes I’ve bought to a formal dinner with my estranged girlfriend will be a problem – I own the hotel.”

What a complete wanker.

John McClaine

So, he’s stalking his estranged wife across the country when there’s a hostage situation downtown. What does Johnny boy do? He’s a policeman remember, so he should know to keep quiet and negotiate. Nope. Despite the fact there’s a hundred innocent people at risk, he punches a guy in the throat and starts firing a gun in the air, blatantly putting everyone at risk. When the authorities arrive, he blasts a gun in the air at them, swears in front of children, drinks heavily and racially abuses people outside their own homes. No wonder his kids hate him.

Despite all our bright eyed looking to the future lately, here at STS we’re still a bunch of miserable old bastards – a fact resolutely hammered home by the recent news that Jackie Chan is now old enough to play Mr.Miyagi. The greatest Martial artist of our youth – after China O’Brien – reduced to playing a wrinkly Yoda analogue. Add to this the fact that he’s accompanied by Jaden Smith -meaning The Fresh Prince is old enough to have a son -and we can almost hear the undertakers sizing us up as we dodder down the street.

Now, other blogs might try to age with dignity, but inspired by Jackie, we’ve decided to fight the ageing process to the death, and in order to take out such a dastardly opponent, we’ll need the finest martial arts movie makers can possibly conjure! If you made it through that convoluted opening paragraph then you might just be tough enough to check out The Greatest Movie Martial Arts!

Fuk Yu – So I Married An axe Murderer

Despite it’s odious reputation as a predecessor to Mike Myers predilection for terrifyingly bad Scottish accents, this mid 90’s rom-com does have one major plus -the ancient Scottish fighting style Fuk Yu. According to the DVD notes, it includes biting, headbutting your opponent and -in the event of a tie -drinking them into submission, and if falling asleep outside in Scotland doesn’t kill you, the art’s main weapon will – the deadly under-cooked haggis.

Rex Kwan Do – Napolean Dynamite

Bow To Your Sensei!!You think Rex goes home to Starla every night because he’s a pussy? Hell no, he’s come up with possibly the most useful fighting style in the world – mainly consisting of kicking people in the head when they mock your unnecessarily roomy trousers. Hey – it’s basically an excuse to punch out those weaker or more geeky than yourself; what’s not to love?

Bending -Avatar, The Last Airbender

If you’re going to practice something called bending, you’d better be pretty damn tough. Apparently each form of bending – I can’t believe I spend my time writing things like this by the way – is based on a real martial art, but I don’t recall Tai Chi ever giving me the ability to flood the city with a giant tidal wave or control a monstrous bison – and not for lack of trying I can tell you.

Robot Jox.

Imagine,if you can, a world where massive demilitarization has taken place. Not an explosive device for a hundred thousand miless in any direction. Now imagine you have access to a 20 metre high robot with missiles on it.

That knows Kung-Fu.

And tell me you wouldn’t be running the show. Despite attempting to make jockeys cool-by adding an ‘X’ to their name- and an 18 rating, Robot Jox still spawned a legion of tiny 90’s fanboys that saw it through 2 laclustre sequels – surely we’re due a J.J.Abrahms reboot soon? Anyway-it’s got giant robots beating each other up!

Shaq-Fu.

Ok, technically not a movie, but Shaq himself was in z-list superhero flick Steel so I’m putting it in anyway – unless you have a better source of basketball-based asskickery equipped with the worst fight interface ever designed?
I thought not.
There’s no other way to say it – Shaq-Fu is shit,but it’s also fucking ridiculous,which counts for a lot round here – head on over to www.saveshaq-fu.com and snag a copy(Sega version natch)before rival www.shaqfu.com destroys them all forever!

Kirk-Fu.

In a list already high on Fu, you’ve got to have something special to stand out, and this combination of of double-axehandles, side kicks and snap-punching women in the face at close quarters has it in spades. Combines an…unusual..uniform (corset, toupee and a requirement that you rip your shirt off and shout ‘Khaaaaaaaaannn!!!’ Half way through the bout) with some exotic weaponry (a rock), and gives us yet another excuse to play the clip above. Take her down Tiberius!

Gunkata.

Remember the trailer? Equilibrium looked great didn’t it? All high kicking Matrix-ey moments foreshadowing Bale’s Batman nicely, unfortunately wrapped around a movie where Sean Pertwee is the villain. Admittedly Pertwee does come from a line of skilled martial artists (his dad knew Venusian tai-bo or something similarly crap in Dr.Who anyway) but the dvd had the right idea-it included a skip to fight function so you could avoid all the gobbledegook and get straight to a fighting style built entirely around figuring out the best possible angle to shoot someone in the face from. Fuck yeah!

Baritsu.

Sherlock Holmes’ preferred method of asskickery, recently bought back to our screens by ‘consider yourself our mate’ Ritchie. Although it might just be a mis-spelling of bartitsu. Apparently its a Japanese form of wrestling, which we assume means its great during the week but loses its sense of balance on a friday night. Anyway, it’s good to see a man in a deerstalker taking out twenty hoodies, and hey – it filled up the list didn’t it – don’t judge me you filthy pigs.

Matrixsu.

Ok, so I made the name up, but when it comes to beating people up it doesn’t get much better than a martial art where you can do pretty much anything. Wall between you and your opponent? Punch through it! Opposisition winning? Fly away! Fulfils every adolescent boy’s power fantasies while showcasing a gobsmacking lack of imagination – if Neo can do anything, why not just make Smith’s head explode? The sequels might be shit,but they did add yet more giant robots into the mix -you can’t go wrong!

Roddy Piper super punchout! – They Live.

Its boxing see. But each round takes place in an alleyway. And lasts 25 minutes. And basically boils down to two men punching each other repeatedly in the face, before finally giving up and going down the pub.

Oh-and they kill some aliens on the way.

Can you think of a more manly form of pugilism?

Well, I definitely left out The Force to annoy you-but can you think of any other’s that would beat this lot? We’re throwing down the guantlet -dare you accept our challenge you big wuss?

Kyle Reese, The T-800, Sarah and John Connor. It looks like global recession may succeed where they all failed and knock out Skynet for good –if a buyer for the Terminator rights can’t be found soon.

“Terminator Salvation: It’s alright I Suppose” Didn’t exactly fire up the box office the way struggling License owners Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek hoped, and now bankruptcy is a-knocking they’re attempting to flog off the dying horse, despite the franchise seemingly carrying a curse; bankrupting every studio that touches it.

It’s probable whoever picks up the rights will squeeze out another McG/Christian Bale shoutathon, although the future of Warner’s Sarah Connor Chronicles and related spin-offs has been cast into serious shadow.

We here at STS were disappointed in the post-T2 drop-off in killer robot quality, and we’d happily organise a whip round to raise the estimated $60Million value, but unfortunately we’re currently $59,999,997.50 short. Dig deep readers-the future is in your hands.

Unhappy with the direction Terminator has taken? Assuming it’s under new management which direction would you like to see the franchise take?

Michael Mann’s latest has some serious talent backing up a great story with so many sensationalist elements it’s amazing it’s remained so under-represented at the movies until now. This is the story of John Dillinger, the notorious bank robber, gangster and all-round bad egg who alternately terrorised and enthralled 30s America with his criminal exploits.

Like the man himself, what we get here is a curiously schizophrenic movie in both style and substance. Mann has gone for some fine, very detailed photography, Tommy-Guns bucking with nary a hint of motion-blur, adding a glacial edge to procedings that slightly dislocates the viewer. Unusually for the director, there’s an awful lot of handy-cam going on, with unusual angles that unfortunately combine with the slightly unreal aesthetic to give the whole a video game sheen. It’s exciting, sure, but it’s also extremely difficult to get emotionally involved.

Likewise, Bale and Depp seem like they’re in completely different films. Depp’s performance is forceful and full of glee, giving a powerful insight into the reasons a bloody killer like Dillinger became something of a folk hero – a modern Robin Hood at the time. His exploits are wild and often deplorable, but carried out with a panache that makes it hard not to admire and even support the man.

It’s tempting to call Bale’s performance dull, but it’s hard to tell if this is another example of the actor losing his way (as seen in several of his recent outings), or the perfect representation of a small, dull FBI man out of his depth, unable to cope with the fame and expectation bestowed upon him by successfully nabbing ‘Pretty boy’ Floyd, and making him subject to the whims of an obsessive J.Edgar Hoover; A heavily made-up and ridiculously accented Billy Crudup, who seems to be having almost as much fun as Depp.

This is however, very much Depp’s film, his performance recalling the slightly manic edge we first saw in Ed Wood, as Dillinger embraces the criminal lifestyle behind bars, Depp showcases the force of personality needed to create Dillinger gangs mark 1 & 2, flirting with disaster as well as the press, and creating an enduring mythology for himself in the process.

Playing out like a midwest version of ‘Heat’, Mann nevertheless manages to distance this from his earlier (and, it has to be said, superior) flick through extreme attention to detail and a willingness to reinvent his action directing, each scene tied up tighter than the morals of Prohibition era America.

A solid mix of drama and action, with some commendable performances. It may well divide audiences and critics. A strong character piece that would benefit from a tighter edit, but still has much to recommend it.

The story itself is straightforward-ish. John Connor is hunting for Kyle Reese, so he can send him back in time to become his own dad (Hey, I said ‘Ish’ didn’t I?). Meanwhile, executed killer Marcus Wright comes back from the dead (maybe…) post judgement day, to find out he’s super human, or maybe not human at all-they team up, fight the machines and try to save Reese- with me so far?

There’s a lot of heavy (metal) metaphor going on here, with Sam Worthington pumped full of liquid metal making a particular impact. It seems at some point in a production process almost as convoluted as the Terminator series various timelines, somebody decided to give us a parable about mankind’s reliance on, and interaction with, technology. Unfortunately for the viewer, this probably doesn’t test too well, so McG replaces it with a bunch of judder-cam and explosions,while losing anything that made us actually care.

Ah, where did it all go wrong? Terminator Salvation has the potential to be a lean, mean killing machine, but unfortunately in this vision of the future, McG is in charge. Despite some fantastic design work and arresting visuals, the whole thing grinds to a halt under the weight of exposition and a refusal to engage with it’s most interesting characters.

Bale looks borderline comatose throughout, doing a little bit of his gruff Bat-vox to make us think he’s earning his pay as he broadcasts robot killing news to the survivors of humanity, even if some of it is a bit stupid (Early Terminators can be killed with a knife, for example), while the rest of his script seems to be limited to shouting his own name at various machines. Meanwhile, Worthington struggles to convey empathy for Marcus, our other central figure. This isn’t to say his acting is bad here, it’s just that we never spend enough time with the character to give a shit. He’s a half human Terminator that thinks he is/actually is human, and thinks he deserves to die. It’s a fascinating conceit, but one that just isn’t developed.

Unfortunately this leads to a choppy, disconnected feel throughout, the explosions look great, and the killer metal eels and death-cycles are amazingly cool, but they never feel as dangerous as they should-mainly because you couldn’t care less if everyone gets killed or not. As an action film it has some fantastic sequences, particularly the opening sequence, and a spectacular helicopter crash, all of which look far more realistic than, say, Transformers, but carry all the dramatic heft of the car crashes in The A-Team. There’s no sense of urgency or peril.

It is possible I’m misreading all this, and the fact that we connect far more with the machines than the humans is some kind of postmodern statement by McG (I kind of doubt it though), and if the blogosphere is to be believed, his original ending was dark, deep and fantastic. Unfortunately it was also common knowledge, so it’s been changed to one of those bloody awful, studio-approved upbeat endings that we all know and fear, and even the original would struggle to cover the plot holes (why exactly does SkyNet have touchscreen controls?) or budget gaps. With a re-edit and a whole bunch of inserted dialogue, this could be great, as it is? Well, there’s a reason it’s been out-box officed by ‘Night at the Museum II’. Not worth saving.