Review - Christy
Directed by: David Michod
Written by: Mirrah Foulkes, David Michod
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster
Running Time: 135 Minutes
Rating: 3/5
David Michod’s Christy is a sports biopic that straddles the safety of structure than reinvent the conventions. Christy Martin’s inspiring and tumultus story marks a bold new step in Sydney Sweeney’s career.
The screen bursts in hot pink — loud, brash, unapologetic — a neon-lit stage for the messy, fractured life of Christy Martin. Christy is a brawl of a movie: a family drama, a sports underdog story, a crime thriller, all stitched together like rounds in a prize fight. Bolstered by a surprisingly commanding performance from Sydney Sweeney - Christy lands a barrage of blows to which some land like uppercuts and others failed jabs - but nevertheless, an impressive bout in the ring.
Christy Martin is a pioneer who carved a space for women in the world of boxing. Her story is powerful, remarkable and at times, almost unbelievable. Her trials and tribulations are fierce, her setbacks immense but the courage to pull through is inspiring and remarkable. With the odds pressed against her from all sides - her parents, her own trainer and husband and even society around her - paint her an outcast. The coalminer’s daughter from a small town in West Virginia never had the change to change her path - until the day she willed it to happen.
Sydney Sweeney steps into the ring with bravado. Her southern twang feels fresh, her body coiled in the kind of physicality we’ve never seen from her before. She swings hard, trying to shake off the sex-symbol skin she’s been saddled with, a hope building deep within her eyes, ferociously building with time - and while her punches don’t always connect and the performance feels a little cold and calculated, the risk is thrilling to watch.
Opposite Sydney - Ben Foster inhabits James Martin with a chilling stillness. His presence is unsettling: vacant eyes, a mouth left open in perpetual hunger, a portrait of obsession that corrodes everything around it. A snake in the grass, what was once a marriage of convivence, becomes a menacing hurricane. Foster lurks in the background, a stinging force in Christy’s path to greatness. Almost 20 years her senior, Martin controls every scene and every decision in Christy’s path, a foreboding presence in the tragedy to come.
Unfortunately for Michod’s Christy; the film sometimes forgets what kind of fight its in - it ducks and weaves in and out of traditional sports biopic, to domestic and familial melodrama and then in its final hour, a rapturous crime thriller. Clocking in at over two hours, the film begins to slog with its pace, almost bogged down by too many details in Christy’s story. The tonal shifts fracture the narrative, and the film stretches beyond its natural length. What emerges is less a cohesive arc than a series of chapters, each reflecting a different facet of Christy’s struggle.
Presenting itself as a world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival; much can be said about the film itself, but the TIFF crowd ate this film up - a potential dark horse as the festivals top prize - the People’s Choice Award. With the film’s main creatives and cast present - as well as the real Christy Martin taking her bow with Sydney - the applause with thunderous and its hype unmistakable.
Maybe with the right campaign, Sydney can swoop in the awards race for a SAG or Golden Globe nom, but I do think it’s a great step in her career. Christy is scrappy, uneven, and loud, but like its subject, it never stops swinging. Not a champion, but a fighter worth watching.
Christy releases on November 7th across Canada and the United States.
