For a film about mixed martial arts, it would have been cool of Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior to demonstrate some mixed martial arts. But maybe I’m projecting my own priorities onto a film more interested in showing us, ad nauseam, how this great whatsit is provoking the audience. No matter how fly-on-the-wall the angles or how human the camera, this isn’t Friday Night Lights. That film and TV series is all about the community investing in the game, whereas Warrior is a stage piece with a spotlight just big enough to illuminate its hero-brothers and their father. All the cutting pretends this match means more than it does, desperately seeking entry into the Hall of Fame. I see the potential, but in practice it’s a deathless conceit that clarifies its own redundancy not only with twelve shots of the exact same person doing the exact same thing but also by mimicking the real life audience in every way except one: our furious cries to get the camera back to the ring!
