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Sydney Sweeney stars in Christy, a biopic about boxer Christy Martin.Allie Fredericks/Elevation Pictures
Christy
Directed by David Michôd
Written by Mirrah Foulkes and David Michôd
Starring Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster and Chad L. Coleman
Classification N/A; 135 minutes
Opens in theatres Nov. 7
There is a wonderful star-is-born story when it comes to the 2000 boxing drama Girlfight. After holding an open casting call near Times Square, director Karyn Kusama and her team were just about ready to call it quits when, suddenly, a 21-year-old high-school dropout with no screen credits to her name rollerbladed up to the audition. The unknown actress, Michelle Rodriguez, nailed the role. And soon, she would become one of the best known big-screen brawlers of her generation.
The star of Christy, easily the most prominent and powerful movie about women boxers since Girlfight or Million Dollar Baby, the latter of which this new film directly references, doesn’t boast as impressive an underdog casting story as Rodriguez. Sydney Sweeney has come to this project already a certified megastar – or a megastar in the movie industry’s own mind, the powers that be trying their very best to mint a new generation of movie idols who will convince the kids to dart their attention away from their phones and toward a larger screen. So far, it’s mostly working.
In the span of just a few short years, Sweeney has conquered prestige television (Euphoria, The White Lotus), the big-studio romcom (Anyone But You) and tabloid-friendly faux controversy (American Eagle jeans). Now, though, she is jumping into her own, 21st-century iteration of Girlfight – a dark, gritty, discerning adult-minded movie that could turn her into a genuine champ. And like Rodriguez before her, she nails it.
Playing Christy Martin, a real-deal coal miner’s daughter from West Virginia who bruised her way into the ring until she became the first woman elected to the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame, Sweeney is a force to be reckoned with. Balancing both believable vulnerability and steel-strong nerves, the actress delivers a performance a world away from anything that she has ever done before – and in the process pulls off a trick that few of her contemporaries would be able to deliver with such deceptively effortless ease.
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While Euphoria has tested the actress’s resolve in the face of wide-eyed adolescent terror, the material in Christy pushes that trauma vortex further, requiring Sweeney to shed any sense of preciousness or vanity. Every step of the way, she grins and bears it, first convincing herself, and then the audience, that she is up for the fight of her life – not dissimilar, of course, to how Martin herself approached each of her own doubters and competitors.
Regrettably, though, too much of director David Michôd’s film fails to deliver as much as blood, sweat and tears as Sweeney herself offers, the familiar beats and boundaries of a sports biopic constantly forcing its star to bounce against the ropes of convention.
The hiccups are evident almost immediately, when Michôd (Animal Kingdom, War Machine) opens the film with a vastly overused Tears for Fears track, the director signaling to his audience either a lack of inventiveness, a strain on music-budget resources, or perhaps a combination of both.
Once the story latches onto the deeply troubling relationship between Martin and her much older husband-slash-trainer James Martin (Ben Foster), the drama cannot escape grim predictability, with Michôd often convincing himself that the best fight, in the ring or in the Martins’ living room, is an exceptionally long fight. Like the dullest of in-ring brawls, this is a movie that drags.
Foster, barely recognizable under excess pounds and a deliberately awful combover, digs deep into his slime-ball villain, matching Sweeney almost beat for beat as the Martins’ marriage turns increasingly dangerous. But James is written as so obviously rotten to the core that the danger he represents just sits there for the duration of the film, growing stale.
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Ben Foster, left, plays Christy’s husband and coach James Martin.Elevation Pictures
There are moments when the movie gets sucker-punched with a startling jolt, and not just when Sweeney is on-screen. Chad L. Coleman (best known as the amateur boxer Cutty from HBO’s The Wire) is so electric as white-haired promoter Don King that he could power the entire Vegas strip. And as played by Ethan Embry and Merritt Wever, Christy’s father and mother are a fascinating study in parental obliviousness.
But this is Sweeney’s show, and when she’s not framed in its dead centre, the movie’s blood cannot help but drip down the drain. The star deserves whatever awards might be coming her way. Don’t make her put up a fight.
