One of the questions that doesn't get asked often enough about movies is: who is this for? While it's often obvious that the path to success lies in having a rock solid answer - the Avatar movies might not be for you, but they're obviously for someone - it's surprising how much time and money and effort gets spent on films where you leave the cinema wondering why the film makers bothered.
Christy is a based-on-actual-events movie about Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney), the woman who single-handedly (in this telling at least) turned female boxing into a profitable sport in America in the 90s. She was also a closeted lesbian for much of that period, married to her trainer James (Ben Foster) in a relationship that became increasingly exploitative. So there's a lot going on, and it's not hard to imagine a version of this story that hits hard for one audience or another.
What we get here though, is a bit of a mess. If you are a fan of boxing, the fights here are nothing to write home about. If you're looking for a story where a woman fights against numerous personal obstacles to become her true self, there's about ten minutes of that right at the very end of the film - and it requires you to spend a very long time with a number of increasingly loathsome characters, all of whom receive next to no on-camera punishment despite deeply deserving it.
Sweeney clearly took on the role hoping to establish herself as a serious actor, which means she spends large chunks of the film looking unglamorous. Her performance is pretty much all that holds this together, though it's uneven at times; Sweeney is at her best playing characters with agency, while much of Christy's story - in this film at least - is about how those around her deny her that.
Not to mention she's playing a character who must have been pretty abrasive in real life for much of her career because even the watered down version is pretty harsh at times. Fortunately her husband is even worse, played by Foster largely as a blank-faced robot just waiting for someone to flip his switch to kill mode. Are these enjoyable people to spend time with? No. Fortunately the fighting scenes are thrilling enough to oh wait no they're not.
Instead of steering into literally any aspect of this story that might have made it entertaining, this comes across as a project handed to people who assumed somebody else was providing the element that would make this take off. Individually the elements are well-crafted - director David Michod knows his stuff - but none of those elements steps forward to become the reason to watch this film.
There are fights but they're not great, her career here skips over the comeback that anywhere else would be the whole point, she's gay but the film almost entirely focuses on people being shitty to her and is more interested in her (male) gym team accepting her than her finding love; the end crawl is basically "you remember that minor character she had one conversation with? That's her wife!".
As a sports biopic it's rote, yet the elements that would make it stand out are largely downplayed. Christy starts out flat on the canvas and never gets up.
- Anthony Morris
