FILM

Brutal boxing! Crack! Family feuds! Oscars nominations! David O. Russell’s latest has got the lot. And it’s all true as well. Venue exchanges blows with the director and stars of ‘The Fighter’.

Filming a true story on the very streets where it unfolded is obviously a big advantage for any film-maker. But what if the story isn't an entirely flattering one and the protagonists are not only still around, but hanging about on set with their extended family?

"Well if anyone is having a real story told about them, that’s going to be a little prickly isn’t it?" shrugs director David O. Russell ('Three Kings', 'I Heart Huckabees'). "You’re going to be a little concerned of how that’s being told. I wanted to always say we were always coming from a place of loving these characters. Which happened to be the truth. Sometimes you have to tell people that and it’s not the truth. In this case it is the truth. I didn’t know how I would feel about the Wards and the Ecklands when I met them, and I really love them so that enables me to tell an even better story. But the sisters will come up and say, 'Hey that girl’s not as pretty as me! Why is she playing me?'"

Nominated for seven Oscars, 'The Fighter' is the true story of two pugilist half-brothers from Lowell, Massachusetts: crackhead screw-up and former boxing hero Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) and 'Irish' Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), who gets a shot at the title that might just cost him his family.

"Dicky more than anybody had a lot of controversial stuff that he did that is in the movie," concedes Russell. "I said, 'It can’t be any worse than the documentary HBO did about you that made you the scandal of Lowell, so we’re only going to go up from there. I’m portraying you in a sympathetic light that shows you getting past that! So let’s not fixate on that!' Micky, of course, loved the picture. I think Micky knew that he won a championship and he knew he was the one who came through it. Mark being sort of the godfather of the picture, I think Micky Ward knew he was in good hands."

That 'godfather' remark is no exaggeration. Wahlberg always had it in mind to play Micky Ward for personal reasons. "I was selfishly wanting to play this part for a very long time and was friends with Micky for years. I promised him I was going to get it done," he affirms. "Micky’s journey is very much like mine. The only difference is I was in the entertainment business and he was an athlete. But other than that, we grew up 30 minutes from each other, both from a family of nine, and both had to overcome a lot of obstacles to achieve our goals and pursue our dreams."

While Wahlberg trained for four-and-a-half years for the role, Bale says jokingly: "I just go like, 'I better wing this one again and make it up!' Slowly, you find ways, brick by brick, of building it up. It feels like hard work and you feel like you’re going to fail everybody. Then eventually it’s just kind of happening and it’s slipping in. Then you forget that you went through the hard work and you think it was all easy."

Having the brothers around was, he says, "just essential, you know? I mean, Mark was always leagues ahead because he’d been training for this for so long anyway; he has his own boxing ring in his house. For me it just was a wonderful opportunity to hang out with Micky and Dicky, get to know them and get to understand their fighting styles - to use it as a means of dropping the weight that I needed to lose in order to look like a welter weight and then a crackhead. I just enjoyed it immensely. I enjoyed their company."

He's also eager to stress that there's more to the film than sweaty men slugging it out in the ring. "'The Fighter' is about brotherly love. It’s about loyalty, about family, family dysfunction, the need to change, the pain of change - but ultimately, the triumph of people who love each other managing to find a healthy way to unite."

'THE FIGHTER' OPENED ON FRI 4 FEB. 
 

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