Sometimes We Care...

The other night I settled in to watch the movie "Warrior". The story of estranged brothers from a broken family competing in the same MMA competition, it had been on my radar for a long time, not only because it resulted in an Oscar nomination for Nick Nolte but because everyone I know who had seen it raved about how excellent it was. Even the people I know who don't like sports movies seemed to enjoy it. Still, even though it has been out for a couple of years I was in no rush to see it, as I had my doubts about how good it could really be. First off, I'm not a huge MMA fan. I gave it a shot back in the days of Ken Shamrock and came away underwhelmed. Secondly, I felt as if I had seen this movie already. Honestly, how many times can we be expected to watch the same sports movie of a down-on-his-luck fighter, desperate for one big fight to pay off his bills and get his nagging wife (who is never supportive) off his back? Of course, there is a reason Hollywood keeps using this formula - it works. Everyone who recommended it to me was right, because "Warrior" is a great film.

The action sequences are tight and the story hits all the normal, sappy, sports-movie-cliche notes without getting bogged down trying to over-emphasis the broken family plotline and make the movie into something deep, which it could never be. This was a fight movie, pure and simple. But the difference between this and all some of the other, worse fight movies which have been unleashed on us lately is that this is a fight movie with great acting. The age-old Hollywood debate when it comes to sports movie is whether you should take actors and teach them to play sports or take athletes and teach them how to act. (My take? Always go with actors. You can hide if they are terrible athletes through clever editing. There is no editing your way around a guy in a lead role who can't act.) This film went with good actors and it paid off because they are believable as fighters. You could tell the actors trained really hard as they were able to pull enough technical moves to look capable in the ring. However, their physiques did lead me to question just how much of that training was done chemically.

Tom Hardy, probably most famous for his work in "Inception", plays one of the lead roles. However, it took me about 40 minutes to recognize him because he is seriously jacked in this movie. Now, an actor putting on or taking off weight to play a role is nothing new in Hollywood. And even though every role I have ever seen him in Hardy appeared to be a fairly in-shape guy, in this instance it looked as though he had done a lot more than just putting in some extra hours at the gym. If you compared it to "Inception", the movie he did just prior to "Warrior", it is a safe guess he put on roughly 25 pounds of pure muscle in a very short amount of time for this role. And, as often happens, once I noticed it I couldn't stop noticing it. The only thing I could think about watching Hardy's performance was that it was like watching a hulking Barry Bonds in his final days as a San Francisco Giant versus his days as a skinny player for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Now, I don't know if Hardy was taking something to help his workout, but if he was he certainly wouldn't be the first one. Remember a few years ago when Sylvester Stallone was arrested in an Australian airport for trying to bring HGH into the country? No one batted an eyelash.

The timing of seeing what appears to be a chemically-enhanced actor is ironic to me, because all week I have been hearing updates about the Roger Clemens steroid re-trial on "SportsCenter" and every reporter on the scene has this attitude in their reports, as if they are annoyed at having to cover this story. They aren't the only ones, as there was a high level of annoyance from the general public the moment a re-trial was announced. Everyone seems to think that there are more important ways for Congress to spend their time. And while I think steroids are a serious problem, I have to agree with them, simply because of the way we choose to go after some people and not others. I can think of a dozen other actors who are suddenly jacked for movie roles and yet I don't seem them being dragged in front of Congress. That double standard is what confuses me. If something is illegal it should be illegal all the time, not just because members of Congress are looking to get some autographs and face time. Yet, action movies can feature guys who are ripped beyond what would be considered normal and not only does no one launch an investigation, most people don't even pay attention. I guess as long as they don't start getting overly-jacked for a baseball movie we're all just going to look the other way.