Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

Christy is far from the first boxing movie, and it will be far from the last. They’ll always be made because the brutal ups and downs of a boxer’s career are evocative of the successes and failures of life. When punches fly and people raise their arms in victory, even lackluster efforts feel satisfying. They are, relatively speaking, easy movies to pull off, which means middling efforts blend quickly with the memories of their predecessors. That will likely be the fate of Christy, which takes the novelty of boxing’s first female superstar and turns it into something you’ve seen many, many times before.

The titular Christy is Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney), a West Virginia girl who makes extra money in amateur bouts. She has no training but a hell of a punch, which is enough to dominate the area. She balks when a gym owner offers to coach and promote her. There’s no money in the sport, at least not for women, and Christy’s got a cozy little life with her secret girlfriend and her family close by. But when her girlfriend leaves her for a guy, reality comes crashing down, and she runs to the gym to hide. Soon it’s her entire life. Her coach, James (Ben Foster), becomes her husband, and she sports a pink outfit to combat the accurate stereotype of female boxers being lesbians. The two get Christy to an elite level, and promoter Don King (Chad L. Coleman) makes her skill lucrative. They’ve created a phenomenon, but behind the scenes, the lies it’s all built upon are waiting to explode.

Like in so many biopics, attention is immediately drawn to the film’s star. It’s a showcase for them, an opportunity to put aside their familiar strengths and reinvent their career. That’s the way Sweeney’s been pitched in Christy, although that narrative requires you to forget about Reality, Immaculate, and the many other projects she’s done that aren’t Euphoria and The White Lotus. It’s an odd notion that Sweeney needs to prove herself, but she went ahead and did the flashy body transformation for the role. Like she has been many times before, she’s solid as the repressed star, making sure her bravado always has a hint of fear. Foster struggles to find the same complexity as his character is pitched as a dangerous, nasty buffoon from the get-go. The most he gets is to layer on some pathetic posturing for laughs, which he plays up for all its worth.

Equally underused is pretty much every other co-star, including Merritt Wever as Christy’s homophobic mom and Katy O’Brian as a fellow boxer. Both have one note to play; O’Brian is someone who sniffs out Christy’s facade quickly and knows she can’t help her take it down. Wever is disapproving in every way you’d imagine a mom from small-town West Virginia would be. There’s only one scene where she surprises, but perhaps it’s more a reflection of my own mother that I can’t imagine one being so cruel.

The scene in question knocks Christy down harder than anything that happens in the ring, which is good because the film can’t rely on its muted fight scenes to make you feel blows. I’m not sure if director David Michôd was restricted by budget or if it was a failed stylistic choice, but there’s rarely a sense of the crowd’s energy, as if fights are happening in a vacuum. Christy largely stands alone in the ring, pummeling opponents and walking away without much sense of satisfaction. The rest of her life is a mess, sure, but the film emphasizes that fighting is the one thing she’s good at. You’d think it’d offer some reprieve from the horrors of her life.

And her life has horrors, not just because of her perm and colorful tracksuits. Success does nothing to protect her from rampant sexism and homophobia, nor does it lessen her husband’s abuse. The latter comes in almost every variety, and if the film’s early brushes with it don’t get you squirming, a later sequence that looks at it head-on will. It’s the only time the film drops its overly manicured style and lets Christy feel like a real, vulnerable person, and despite how striking it is, it’s too little too late. You’ve already slogged through an hour and a half of a film that brings nothing new to the table, and it quickly falls back into familiarity for a drawn-out conclusion.

Nothing Christy does is an outright failure, but there’s a much better film to be made from everything Christy Martin’s life brings to the table. 

Release: In theaters now
Director: David Michôd
Writers: Mirrah Foulkes, David Michôd
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian