Warrior: A Family That Ultimate Fights Together…

Details

Warrior
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
Lionsgate
Opens September 9

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More About

• Tom Hardy
• Joel Edgerton
• Nick Nolte
• Mixed Martial Arts
• Martial Arts

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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 fire sale 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.