Christy ★★½

David Michôd’s Christy packs a punch. Unflinching and often brutal, Christy tells the life story of Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney). Born in West Virginia in a conservative and religious small-town, Christy is a lesbian in a place where that is simply not an option. She is also a rough and tumble young woman, fighting on the basketball court and eventually making a name for herself in amateur boxing events. She is soon spotted by a regional promoter of the sport who thinks she has a future. It is not long before she heads to Tennessee to be trained by Jim Martin (Ben Foster), who she ends up marrying, and to begin a path to the very top of women’s boxing. A trailblazer in the sport as not only a champion but also the lone woman signed by famed boxing promoter Don King (Chad L. Coleman) and a participant in the first women’s boxing event on pay-per-view, Christy’s story is as often triumphant and rousing as it is tragic.

Michôd’s film benefits considerably from Sydney Sweeney. This is her best performance to date, disappearing into her role. Martin is a complicated woman. She is a lesbian, but trash talks opponents for being a lesbian. Hardened by her rough life, she takes any genuine display of kindness in others as a double-edged sword meant to throw her off. Feisty, antagonistic, and cocky in the ring, she lives under the thumb of Jim outside of the ring and deals with not only his constant micro-aggressions but also his outright abuse. Sweeney plays this role with the bravado and swagger it needs at times, as well as the genuine inner strength and grace that drives Christy forward. There are more than a few montages of her fights where her antics and triumphs in the ring sweep one up in the thrill and excitement of the sport, but it always comes crashing down when she is at home. The centerpiece of the film is a particularly startling incident of domestic violence, one that shows Jim at his most depraved and Christy at her strongest. It is remarkable and presented without any music with the only sound coming from the weapons and a few sparse bits of dialogue. Undoubtedly a moment that will be triggering for any viewers with specific trauma to such incidents, it is also a scene that takes one’s breath away. Sweeney is remarkable in capturing Christy’s will to live, determination, and grit, as well as her mixture of emotions beneath that. The shame in “allowing” it to get to this point, her rage in those who she sees as having placed her in this spot (namely her mother, whose rampant homophobia and misogyny and desire for her daughter to lead a heteronormative lifestyle knows no bounds, to a shocking degree), and her rush of emotion as the reality of the situation hits after the initial shock. It is a sequence of pure acting, a raw and powerful example of what Sweeney is capable of when given the opportunity.

Christy is filled with strong performances in addition to Sweeney’s. Ben Foster gives a typically great performance as Jim. One loathes him from his first scene where he blows off Christy with such disrespect and contempt, a feeling that never subsides even as Christy ends up marrying Jim out of convenience. His every action reveals the shallow and inconsiderate nature of this man, one content to leech off of Christy’s success and a parasitic need to see that continue, even if it means putting her in increasingly dangerous positions to try to garner larger purses. Foster’s small actions – like repeatedly combing his obviously balding hair, the way his face slightly contorts when put off by something Christy says or does, and the cold, unfeeling look behind eyes in the aforementioned domestic violence scene – bring Jim to life, baring his dark soul for the world to see. Christy’s mother Joyce (Merritt Wever), the hard-line conservative who would sooner see her daughter trapped in an abusive and controlling relationship with a man than see her with a woman is just as contemptuous and impressively captured by Wever. There is just something about how Wever’s eyes move about and her face contorts that exudes that unique brand of Southern charm inflection mixed with her various bigoted opinions and arrogance in expressing all of them all the time, that really rings true and positions her as an all-too-familiar part of many young LGBTQ individuals’ journeys, especially in the 1980s-early 2000s era Christy depicts. Chad L. Coleman steals scenes as Don King, the larger-than-life boxing promoter who signs Christy and sees right through Jim. The couple’s initial meeting with King is often hilarious in how King undercuts Jim with Coleman’s showmanship and charisma capturing King’s aura.

Despite these strengths, however, Christy struggles to break free. It is a boxing film and it earns its thrills and emotional connection with one always rooting for Christy to come out on top, but it is nevertheless a conventional boxing biopic. One has seen this film before and has felt these thrills before in better films. Michôd plays it close to the tropes and one especially feels the creaking of this formulaic rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall approach even as moments of Christy’s life punctuate it with authenticity and pathos. It has been flattened into a familiar story with these characters all fitting specific roles and never explored in any depth, most notably Lisa Holewyne (Katy O’Brian), an important figure in Christy’s life who is only given a few scenes and all of them are about exploring Christy, not Lisa. The first hour of Christy especially suffers with years going by in the blink of an eye, the flow choppy and rushed with Michôd trying to condense 30 years of a life into a slightly over two-hour film. It is no easy task, but one that forces the film into very direct and explanatory dialogue and one that also leads to some unfortunate corner-cutting. How the entire cast looks in 1989 is basically how they all look in 2010. Christy changes her hair and they add some gray to everybody else’s hair, but nobody looks aged. The make-up work or the lack thereof strips Christy of some believability, especially as this allegedly middle-aged Christy Martin looks shockingly like the same 23-year-old Christy who first burst onto the boxing scene.

Christy tells a thrilling and harrowing story of a woman who was a terror in the ring and whose life was marked by hardship and abuse outside of the ring. It is undeniably affecting, while there is some effort to explore the full scope of Christy Martin. There is a cultural element with her conservative upbringing, her own self-repression, the dichotomy forced upon her of being a rough fighter and a traditional, controlled housewife, and her fight to be herself and to fight for herself, that is really fascinating but given such slight portrayals that one cannot help but wish for more depth across the scope of Christy’s themes. Fortunately, with such a great cast with a better-than-ever Sydney Sweeney in the lead role, Christy overcomes its flaws and while it may not stand as a great boxing picture, it is one that earns every emotion it aims for and one that rightfully positions Christy Martin as a remarkable woman of strength, bravery, and determination.