Ah the boxing movie. A right of passage for every actor who wants an Oscar someday. This time it’s Sydney Sweeney’s turn to don the trunks, and try to tell Christy Martin’s story. Unfortunately, I wished Michod and Sweeney looked a little closer, because boxing is the least interesting thing about Christy Martin.
Born Christy Salters (Sydney Sweeney), the first female boxing legend came from humble beginnings in 1989 West Virginia. Not exactly the best time to have a girlfriend, Rosie (Jess Gabor), especially if you have a mom like Joyce (Merritt Wever). Christy uses that internal anger and unleashes it in the ring, eventually drawing the attention of trainer James V. Martin (Ben Foster). Martin sees Christy as his ticket out of mediocrity, and not only trains her into a boxing great, but marries her to put tabloid questions about his “protege” to bed. By the mid 90’s Christy Martin has skyrocketed into superstardom, thanks to Don King (Chad L. Coleman) taking her under his wing and getting her on lunchboxes and nighttime news across the country.
As an acting exercise, Christy mostly works. Sweeney does the physical work for the role, putting on weight and donning an accent/wig to transform reasonably well into the boxer. But David Michod cast her for the 2nd half of the movie. Sweeney is one of the best at barely containing combustion rolling through a person. By the time we get to the Laila Ali (Naomi Graham) fight, Sweeny has turned Christy into a walking juxtaposition of in ring dominance with out of ring frailty. You feel Christy’s tug of war over everything in her life, and how she feels trapped into this persona she’s put herself into, thanks to Sweeney’s commitment to the role.
It’s just we’ve got Christy Martin’s story order backwards. Martin probably wanted this to feel like an inspirational sports movie, with all the arcs that go along with that, and downplaying “the rest.” Unfortunately, “the rest” is the most interesting parts of the film. I would have preferred Christy instead be an upscaled Lifetime Original domestic thriller, starring Sydney Sweeney as the kidnapped Christy trapped in her own home by a growingly psychotic abusive Ben Foster. Those parts of this movie contain all the meat of Christy’s emotional state. If we made the domestic situation the main storyline, the audience would feel the complications, discontent, and eventually paranoia slowly close in around her. That would make Christy feel more like the horror film that her life became, and she could instead be the final girl that overcomes and beats the bad guy instead of the uplifting sports figure she doesn’t really fit into.
I’m glad we got a movie about Christy Martin though. She’s a pioneer of women’s boxing, at deserves all the accolades that should come with it. And Lifetime, get to work on the lower budget version of this film, which I will gladly watch and enjoy in all it’s dumb broad strokes. But pay Ben Foster to star in it, his serial killer stare is necessary for the movie to creep out the mom’s having wine and watching on a Friday night.