Bale was awesome. And I still find myself laughing over, “Pans hurt!” 
I live in Lowell. I loved that movie. I swear I’ve met those sisters in the laundromat.
I saw Fighter and Town in the same week. If you know the blue-collar North East, you’ll understand why I love the first and hated the second.
Bale was astonishing; Walhberg, while playing to type, did a very good job; the women who played the Weird Sisters will probably never work again.
The charm of the movie is that it has a ‘real’ happy ending; the hero does not score the gorgeous blond, become a millionaire, and slap his family into line with the perfect speech.
He does okay, gets a decent second career going, and marries a woman tough enough to keep his family in line - after a completely non-eloquent speech to Mom.
The thing about Wahlberg’s performance (I think he is capable of being a great actor. He got an Oscar nomination for The Departed and he deserved it.) - he was playing a real person, one who in real life (if you’ve seen him on TV) just really isn’t that interesting, doesn’t have a lot of personality. This is probably because he is overshadowed by his showboat brother. So, Wahlberg was probably giving a very nuanced portrayal of a fairly boring guy.
When you see the two real brothers at the end, you see that Wahlberg and Bale are playing them pretty true to life - Dicky is a motormouth and Micky can’t get a word in edgewise, but takes it with a kind of quiet humor.
Haven’t seen it and don’t plan to. Regardless of the acting (and I like Bale and Walberg), simply put, boxing is depressing to me. I haven’t seen any of the Rocky Balboa movies, and I don’t watch any tv or movie that features boxing. It’s barbaric; how can modern man continue to enjoy and exhibit two humans beating up each other almost to the point of death. (I realize there are women boxers also.) To my dismay, “ultimate fighting” is even worse (“mixed martial arts”)? What little I’ve seen, it appears to be about two men beating the hell out of each other. How can a civilized society permit such a thing? It seems that “bread and circuses” will never go out of style for many blood-thirsty humans (woe be it to the other species of the earth).
Thanks for sharing.
I saw it a couple weeks ago. Again, Bale put in an excellent performance, throwing himself 100% into his character, like he did for The Machinist and Rescue Dawn. I was also impressed by how closely Wahlberg & Bale nailed the real brothers in their performances. Also the actress who played the mother gave a great performance. I’ve seen families like that growing up, and I liked that the movie didn’t sugarcoat anything; the dysfunctional family, Dickie’s crack addiction, the scams he & his girlfriend ran to get their dope, and how the family and Dickie’s addiction were holding Micky back in his boxing career.
I saw it about a month ago. I really liked it and I thought the scenes with the ‘family’ were just fantastic. It is incredibly difficult to get people to act that naturally in a large group. Everyone talking at once. Several conservations going on at the same time. It’s a lot of work and they did it great.
I generally like Christian Bale. The fact that I wanted to slug his character in the mouth after about 30 seconds of screentime really shows how he can embody a character.
I thought the movie was outstanding. I’m a little sorry the field of quality films this year is so unusually deep, as I think in most other years it would have fared even better.
Whalberg, Leo, Bale and Adams all gave truly exceptional performances.
As to the 80s look, it’s just a poor white neighborhood thing. After living in Phoenix since 94, in 2001 I went back to the little town in Ohio where I grew up for a visit. People I went to high school with were still driving IROCs and wearing David Lee Roth shirts they bought on the Eat 'Em & Smile tour.