Warrior, come out to play-ay…

Another night, another advanced movie screening courtesy of Sky Movies.

This time it was “Warrior”, which is aiming to be the MMA equivalent of Rocky and stars Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte.

Two brothers have separately escaped their abusive dad and gone their separate ways. One is a school teacher, the other a former marine. All they have in common is fighting (which they do, a lot). When the elder brother’s house is due to be repossessed he enters the “Sparta” tournament, a sixteen man elimination MMA event, in the hopes of winning the $5million cash prize. However, his younger brother has reunited with their estranged father and is training in the hopes of winning the same tournament…

I appreciate that this will make me sound old, but there is absolutely NO WAY that this film should be a 12a. A lot of films get a 15 rating based on swearing. Whilst this doesn’t contain any naughty words, it contains extremely brutal violence. Lots of it. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I’m sure there was enough to warrant making this a 15. I looked on the BBFC website about this, but at the time of writing there was no further classification information available. Oh well.

The film itself is better than I expected. As predicted it is (of course) primarily about the fight scenes, but Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton give the film some heart as the two brothers, whilst Nick Nolte gives powerful support as their father trying to make amends for his past misdeeds. Wrestling fans will also enjoy the appearance of former WWE wrestler and Olympic Gold Medallist Kurt Angle as the “best MMA fighter in the world” Koba.

On the negative side, Jennifer Morrison, who was annoying in House and annoying in How I Met Your Mother, is annoying in this. Another problem is that both characters have reasons to win the five million dollars, and the film ends without explaining whether the loser resolved the problems he needed the money for, which is slightly unsatisfying. It’s also long (think it came in about 140mins), so could have done with being 30mins shorter; however I wasn’t ever really bored so that’s not a major concern.

The fight scenes are really what people are going to want to see the film for, and there’s an interesting mix of different types of fights. I found the mixture of brutal knockouts (Hardy) and ground-based submissions (Edgerton) entertaining. I’ve only got a fairly amateurish knowledge of MMA, however I would question how gripping they might be to someone who had no knowledge of the sport.

Ultimately it’s a fight movie with heart, though not as much heart as Rocky. Worth a watch if you’re in the mood for some brutal violence.