Warrior (2011): A review

I'm a casual MMA fan. I sometimes like to watch UFC fights. Legends like GSP, Fedor, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, etc. Even Conor McGregor can be entertaining to watch, despite his insufferable trash talking.

The movie Warrior (2011) is perhaps my favorite sports film. The plot involves MMA fighting, but the movie is really about redemptive love.

Spoilers ahead.

The story centers around three individuals - a father and his two sons. An ex-alcoholic father who has returned to Christianity and wants to make amends with his grown sons, but his sons remember who or what he was before, and so refuse to have anything to do with him. It's refreshing to see (faltering) Christian faith portrayed positively in a Hollywood film.

A younger son who ran away with his mother to escape a drunken and abusive father and husband, who had to watch his mother die from cancer, and as a result hates his father.

An older son who stayed with his father rather than escaping with his brother and mother, which his brother resents him for. However, the older son didn't stay to be with his father, but he stayed because he loved a girl whom he ended up marrying and building a family with.

The father used to be a coach. He trained both his sons to be good fighters. His younger son hates him, but his younger son recognizes his father's talent as a coach. So he asks his father to train him, but he refuses to develop a relationship with his father, though his father desperately longs for one.

The older son agrees to fight in the MMA for more conventional reasons. He's a former high school physics teacher who has lost his job, is struggling to make mortgage payments, and needs to keep the bank from taking over his house. He fights to save his home.

The younger son is an Iraq war veteran. In fact, he's a war hero because he saved the lives of fellow soldiers. However, his dirty secret is he had gone AWOL. He abandoned his post. As he fled, he happened to run into trapped Marine comrades, and he couldn't let them die, so he rescued them. His rescue was caught on camera.

Truth is he's been running away his entire life. He ran away from his father with his mother. He ran away from his Marine comrades. He ran away from a firefight in which all died except for him only because he ran away. He's a runaway and a coward.

At the same time, he's filled with so much rage. Rage which originated against his father. Rage against himself, his own fears and cowardice, which runs away from fights rather than faces them. The MMA tournament is his anger management room. He uses it as a twisted form of self-therapy. He unloads his rage against his opponents in the octagon.

Indeed, he's relentless. Merciless. A man possessed. His inner demons driving him forward make him such a formidable MMA fighter, a force of nature, which the crowds adore. However, the cost is he's consumed by his demons. Consumed within and without. Tormented by inner fiends.

It's no coincidence one of the running themes in the movie involves the novel Moby-Dick. The younger son is like Captain Ahab obsessed with his wild hunt for the white whale (his father). Ahab is willing to lose his limbs, his own life, and face eternal damnation if only it means he can avenge himself against the white whale. He's devoured by a monomaniacal madness.

Of course, this isn't the way to soul-peace. Rather this is the way to the fiery pits of hell. The fire which rages within threatens to engulf or swallow him whole.

The night before the final fight, the father tries his best to reconcile with his younger son, but the younger son has only severe rebuffs and bitter words for his father. As a result, the father falls back into drinking alcohol despite having been sober for over 1,000 days. The younger son sees his father in this pitiable state.

And the younger son sees himself through his father's eyes when the father pointedly calls him "Ahab" and tells him to "stop this ship". The younger son begins to realize how his hatred has driven him to insanities. This marks a turning point, for he's coming to his senses, he's letting down his sails, but the fierce winds still prevail.

It will come as no surprise that the two brothers meet in a winner-takes-all final fight for the climax of the film. The cage match itself is less about the physical fight (though the fight is exciting) and more about a deeper fight. A fight for peace, forgiveness, reconciliation. It takes a physical pummeling for the younger brother to be subdued and for his rage to be quenched once and for all.

Just as Ahab lost his leg, the younger brother has his arm broken by his older brother. But unlike Ahab, the younger brother finally "submits" (literally) to his older brother. Yet this is no grudge match. This is not Cain and Abel. Nor, despite the fact that the younger brother is a prodigal son, is there an angry and jealous older brother at the end of the tale.

Instead, it's more like Jacob wrestling the angel of the Lord who dislocated his hip so that he has a permanent limp, but due to this experience Jacob emerges a humbled and transformed man. The older brother is the younger brother's keeper. The older brother loves his younger brother. The older brother apologizes to the younger brother, cradling him in his arms, as both shed their tears. The two brothers are reconciled; their father watches both his sons with a smile.

All in all, it's a moving display of tenderness in brutality. I suppose sometimes redemptive love can only come through savage violence.