I’ve had it with Sydney Sweeney this year. In the same vein as Taylor Swift and Donald Trump, her face is thrust into my feed daily and she simply cannot be avoided online. I also think her qualities as a actress have been exaggerated in service of her pop culture power. Having said that, it can’t be denied that she left it all out on the field in Christy, the biopic of women’s boxing legend, Christy Martin.
The film is classic linear biographical storytelling, beginning with the start of her career in the late 1980s and ending in the….
!!!SPOILERS!!!
….brutal and tragic stabbing by her long-time trainer and husband, Jim Martin, played with brilliant menace by the incredibly talented and underrated Ben Foster.
Sweeney really does transform and delivers a fine performance, as she’s navigating her sexuality (and her family/friends who are sadly suppressing it) while she shoots to the super stardom stage of boxing in Las Vegas for the legendary Don King. On the other side of the billing, Ben Foster delivers one of the best villain performances of the year, featuring similar levels of terrifying menace as Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw in One Battle After Another. He just oozes evil and it’s another testament to his underrated talent.
The film’s tone is weirdly imbalanced, however. Certainly the intent is to convey the diverse experiences Martin encountered over the course of her life, featuring many tragedies and triumphs. But the way in which these various tones were conveyed didn’t quite mesh well.
During Martin’s rise up the boxing ranks in the second act, there’s a montage of success accompanied by medley of crowd-pleaser hit songs that felt like a random soundtrack, instead of thoughtful musical accompaniment. Then pivoting to the brutal stabbing scene in the third act transitioned into borderline horror. Which accurately convedy the tragic nature of the situation, but within the context of the film’s overall trajectory, it just felt out of place (albiet intense). It also felt overly long at 135 mins, and therefore the pacing between stages of life also suffered from a similar imbalance.
The boxing scenes themselves were mostly great, though. I don’t know shit about boxing, but the choreography looked legit and brutal in nature. It’s clear Sweeney took the time to train and learn the sport, which I appreciate and give her credit for. Honestly, the fights were more interesting and entertaining than The Smashing Machine, which surprised me.
All in all, Christy is a very solid sports biopic. Well-crafted and well-acted. It just won’t likely stand the test of time among the other great peers in the genre.
