At one point in “Christy,” boxer Christy Martin, played with fierce abandon by Sydney Sweeney, describes how she feels in the ring. It's not what you expect.
According to her, this is where she finds silence.
Such a line at the beginning of this two-hour film would be laughable, given that the ring is clearly hectic, loud, bloody – and frightening to most of the world. But when Martin says it, we understand it. In the ring, Christie can control the situation. On the street – and especially at home, in the bedroom – life becomes truly scary.
Christie, directed by David Michôd, starts out as a solid sports biopic based on a true story about Martin, a hot-tempered teenager from coal-mining country who takes up boxing and becomes a pioneer for women in the sport. This is the triumphant part.
But then tragedy strikes: the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her trainer and husband, Jim Martin. And that, of course, is where the boxing montages end. In its final act, Christie gets darker than anything we were prepared for.
The genre mash-up may be a little rough around the edges in tone, but it ultimately works, not least because of its unifying factor: Sweeney, who infuses her no-holds-barred portrayal of Martin with both sweetness and fury, liveliness and real vulnerability. The actor's experience in MMA fighting was clearly important for this role, for which she gained significant weight (a la De Niro in Raging Bull) and trained extensively. (She also donned a brown mullet wig and wore brown contact lenses, further distancing herself visually from Sydney Sweeney, the movie star.)
The story begins in 1989 in a small town in West Virginia, where Martin lives with his parents, a loving but weak father (Ethan Embry) and a dim-witted, intolerant mother (Merritt Wever). This is not an environment in which a gay teenager can hope to thrive or even survive. Fearing her attempts, they threaten to send her to the priest.
That's why when Christie gets a chance to make $500 from a boxing match thanks to a local promoter, she takes it. At the gym, she meets Coach Jim (Ben Foster, a bumbling and ultimately terrifying villain in an ugly combover). At first he has no interest and sends the man to fight her and “break a rib if he has to.” She cleans the guy's watch.
Soon Christy is living away from home in a cheap apartment and training full time. “I think I’ve found my thing,” she says. Unfortunately, learning from Jim also means having to obey him in other ways. She goes home, but he lures her back with promises of the best fights in Florida, living near the beach and meeting super-promoter Don King.
Well, Christy doesn't have a beach, but she does have… a husband. Jim, increasingly jealous and paranoid, makes an extremely unpleasant marriage proposal. Christy obviously feels like she has no choice.
Eventually, she gets a meeting with King. The promoter likes her courage and offers her a contract. “Coal miner’s daughter,” he says approvingly (Chad L. Coleman, bringing humor to the role). He also likes that she wears pink.
In her first big fight for King, the pressure is enormous (director Micheaux is particularly good at depicting the incredibly tense atmosphere around the ring, giving the proceedings an authenticity that some boxing films fail to achieve). But when a nervous Christie steps into the ring in her pink robe, her skills and bravado take over. Blood runs from her nose and splatters across her white T-shirt, but she grins happily.
The couple soon find themselves in a much nicer home and being interviewed by the media. “I’m an ordinary housewife who makes a living cutting people down,” she tells the journalist. She cooks, cleans and fights.
And then the film turns into a harrowing drama of domestic violence.
If you know Christy Martin's story, you know that she barely escaped marriage. Either way, the film's final minutes are so heartbreaking that you wouldn't believe it actually happened—if it didn't.
And she survived, which is incredible.
“The Lady is a Champion,” proclaimed the cover of Sports Illustrated when Martin, the first female boxer to occupy that hallowed spot, was featured on the cover in 1996. Coming from “Christie,” we understand that what made her a champion had more to do with her exceptional toughness outside the ring than with her jabs and hooks inside it.
“Christie,” a Black Bear release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for language, violence/gore, some drug use and sexual content.” Duration: 135 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
