Another day, another unimaginative biopic. In no other genre do filmmakers so regularly take otherwise interesting stories and deaden them. Naomi Watts as the Princess of Wales in 2013’s Diana? Dismal. Ashton Kutcher as the Apple founder in Jobs? About as dramatic as a Wikipedia page.
And now we can add to the canon Christy, a pitifully undercooked adaptation of Christy Martin’s 2022 memoir Fighting for Survival. Martin, sometimes known as The Coal Miner’s Daughter, is a former professional boxer, and is widely considered the person who legitimised the sport for women in the 90s. Her historic 1996 fight with Deirdre Gogarty, and her support from Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson’s promoter Don King, propelled her to stardom. She was also emotionally and physically abused by her much older manager/husband Jim Martin throughout their marriage – he went to prison for her attempted murder – and later she came out as gay and married her former ring rival Lisa Holewyne.
There is more than enough material here for a brutal, full-blooded drama and satisfying exploration of tenacity against the odds. But writer-director David Michôd hops through Martin’s timeline in a lifeless, linear fashion that feels more Rocky 5 than Raging Bull. Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, The White Lotus) put on 13 kilos for the role of Christy Martin and more or less looks the part (“You should grow your hair. No one wants to see a butch girl fight,” Jim snarls) but a style that is perhaps intended to communicate insouciance too often comes across as a detachment that feels, well, dull.
This is the kind of role historically favoured by good-looking actors on the up looking for an Oscar nomination – change your physique or don some prosthetics (hello, Charlize Theron in 2003’s Monster) and show people you’re not just a pretty face. Sweeney is altogether too bland here.
The script, admittedly, doesn’t offer much to work with. We first meet Martin before all the boxing: in the closet, a little directionless. Then she meets Jim, takes up fighting and rises through the ranks gaining professional acclaim – edging ever closer to the near-fatal encounter with her increasingly cruel husband. The story concludes with a final syrupy acceptance that she should learn to be herself.
The most interesting bits are where we see how deeply embedded homophobia and old-fashioned conservative values can be. Martin isn’t just hiding from external disapproval; she’s actually fairly sexist herself. “You’re the man, you’re supposed to check the oil and earn the money,” she whines to Jim, who later takes advantage of this to push his wife’s feminine qualities as part of her celebrity. “I’m just a regular housewife who happens to knock people out for a living,” she jokes to reporters, as he towers over her ominously. Are these beliefs hers or his? It’s hard to tell.
Ben Foster is terrific as the unctuous bully Jim, terrifyingly soft-spoken and unfeeling. There’s another great performance too from Merritt Wever (Unbelievable) as Christy’s mother, a woman so petrified of what the neighbours might think of her daughter’s “lifestyle” choices that she supports her abhorrent son-in-law.
But the film never rises above its clichés. Sweeney, so much more nuanced in drug drama Echo Valley earlier this year, is capable of more than this – she bares her teeth briefly in the historic match with Gogarty, where, bloodied and battered, her face lights up, a fire finally appearing as she bobs and weaves. But she’s undercut by a drab script, and a deficit of ferocity in a film that should feel like a fight to the death but instead comes across more like a light scuffle
In cinemas 28 November
