Warrior
Is this the most underrated movie of the 2010s?
Directed By: Gavin O’Connor
Other Notable Films From O’Connor: Miracle, The Accountant, The Accountant 2
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, Frank Grillo
Screenplay By: Gavin O’Connor, Greg O’Connor, Cliff Dorfman
Movie Synopsis: A family torn apart by violence is brought back together with different violence.
Signature Line: “You owe me 200 bucks.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
There are a number of reasons why Warrior, a movie about two long-separated brothers and their estranged father who all get brought back together through violence, shouldn’t work.
For one, it stars two non-American actors with no real fighting experience who are tasked with playing blue collar American men who are extremely good at fighting. For two, it was co-written by a guy who’d never written a feature film script before (and, for that matter, hasn’t written a feature script since). And for three, the person directing it had no experience directing fight movies.
And that’s to say nothing of its intention to feature nearly a dozen separate fights over its 140-minute runtime or its lack of obvious star power (its biggest name at the time was Nick Nolte, whose three previous movies were Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, the very bad Russell Brand vehicle Arthur, and the very bad Kevin James vehicle Zookeeper).
And yet, from that melee of uncertain ingredients: a masterpiece. An utterly brilliant excavation of emotionality via collision that’s often regarded as the best fight movie since 1976’s Rocky—and arguably the most underrated movie of the 2010s.
The film’s director (Gavin O’Connor) has since gone on to establish himself as an auteur who specializes at injecting unexpected depth into unexpected moments (he did this most recently in the buddy action movie The Accountant 2, which features a surprisingly emotional interaction between a psychopathic killer and his autistic brother atop a travel trailer). Warrior’s aging star (Nolte) gave the last great performance of his career, earning a surprising but thoroughly deserved Oscar nomination. And its two non-American actors with no real fight experience (Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton) are now critically-acclaimed performers who’ve since racked up Oscar nominations (Hardy), Golden Globe nominations (Edgerton), and Directors Guild nominations.1
Fifteen years after its premiere, Warrior has aged its way into a triumph—a paragon of the genre that helped not only expand what a fight movie could be, but what it could make audiences feel.
Not bad for a movie that never should’ve worked.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Warrior
2:27: Nick Nolte is here. He plays Paddy Conlon, a recovering alcoholic who lives alone because he ruined all the relationships in his life. Nolte is a crusher in this. He’s really, really good and really, really sad. I think it’s the third best performance he’s ever had, behind only 1991’s The Prince of Tides and 1998’s Affliction.
4:38: Tom Hardy is here. He plays Tommy Conlon, the angrier of Paddy’s two sons. He a brooding former Marine with a dark secret who’s also an extremely talented fighter. I love Hardy in this role and also I love him just in general. He’s able to do the thing where he turns his intensity up so high that it vibrates the theater screen, which is a trick only a handful of actors have ever been able to pull off.
4:39: P.S. My guess is that “A brooding former Marine with a dark secret who’s also an extremely talented fighter” is exactly what Joe Rogan types into the search bar when he visits a porn site.
8:01: In addition to being a drunk, Paddy also physically abused his wife and sons. When their mom escaped Paddy, Tommy (who was just a child at the time) went with her. They drove as far west as they could to get away from Paddy, eventually landing in Tacoma, Washington. When Tommy’s mom fell terminally ill, he cared for her until she died. After that, Tommy joined the Marines. He and Paddy haven’t seen each other for 14 years. Tommy hates his father, and also he hates God, too. And the benefit of casting Tom Hardy in your movie is can say with just one single look what it took me 100+ words to write.
8:46: Joel Edgerton is here. He plays Brendan Conlon, Tommy’s older brother. Brendan’s a mild-mannered father who works as a teacher by day and fights in parking lot MMA events around town at night to make extra cash. Back when I was a teacher looking to make some extra money, I was actually torn between between becoming a writer and becoming an MMA fighter. I even signed up for an MMA gym. Unfortunately, the gym kicked me out because their membership numbers kept dropping because everyone else was so intimidated by me. Sometimes your career chooses you, I suppose.
11:40: This is what every guy who wears a Carhartt jacket thinks he looks like while wearing a Carhartt jacket.
12:06: Brendan is a science teacher, by the way. And back when I watched this movie for the first time in 2011, I was also a science teacher. A thing I’ll never forget: My very first year, I was trying to teach the kids the Laws of Motion (which is what Brendan doing here), and I was completely lost and just sort of saying gibberish as I tried to fake my way through it, and a girl raised her hand, waited for me to call on her, and then as soon as I did, she said, “This is your first time doing this, huh?” 💀💀💀
14:24: Oh, baby. Here we go. The alpha predator in the gym (a professional fighter named Mad Dog) just disposed of another sparring partner. The gym’s owner (Colt Boyd) is trying to find a quick replacement. After Tommy overhears Colt telling the manager that he’ll pay some other sparring partner $200 if he can be at the gym in 20 minutes, Tommy offers to step in and offer to spar with Mad Dog.
This scene is so fucking dope. It’s one of the most exciting movie moments of the decade, and also the moment when Warrior announces its intention to join the ranks of the all-time great fight movies. Let’s do a piece-by-piece breakdown of it, but first let’s watch it together because it’s just a ton of fun:
Perfect. Just perfect. The 15 best parts of the scene:
