What Marky Mark learned from PacMan

Now we know why Mark Wahlberg was stuck like glue on Manny Pacquiao for over a year: he was studying PacMan’s moves.

The movie poster for The Fighter, David O. Russell’s latest film, says it all:

“I would love Manny Pacquiao to see the movie. Every time he was training at Wild Card Gym, I watched him because I wanted to look like a Manny Pacquiao-caliber fighter.”

So Wahlberg, who plays upcoming boxer “Irish” Micky Ward, was absorbing Pacquiao’s authenticity and channeling it into his character. But he also no doubt can relate to the tale of an underdog coming up from modest beginnings to rule the world: Wahlberg himself came from the projects outside of Boston. Pacquaio came from Tondo.

And Micky Ward comes from the depressed industrial town of Lowell, yet another of Hollywood’s depictions of blue-collar Massachusetts of late. In The Fighter, Wahlberg’s Micky is perennially overshadowed by his grandiose crackhead brother, Dicky Eklund (the riveting Christian Bale), a coulda-made-it boxer whose claim to fame was knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard in a match over a decade ago. (Others say Sugar Ray “slipped.”) He still coasts on being the “Pride of Lowell,” even though he never went the distance, never got a title match. Instead, he and his equally delusional mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), train Micky for boxing mismatches that result in a meager payoff along with broken bones and bruises for Micky.

Amy Adams plays Charlene, a Lowell gal who can dish it out as well as she takes it.

Local bartender Charlene (Amy Adams) thinks Micky should smarten up and get some professional training, and this causes a rift in the family, notably for the perm-teased mother Alice (who adores Dicky but would put Micky through a meat grinder to restore the family’s fame and fortune) and her gallery of seven ugly daughters who must have been selected straight off the barstools of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Dicky, meanwhile, is ratcheted up too tight from the moment the camera opens on him. With his bugged-out eyes, buzzard-like gait and perpetual sweats, Bale drops deep into character here, announcing to everyone in Lowell that HBO is making “a movie about my comeback.” Turns out they’re doing a documentary called “Crack in America” on the then-current drug scourge (the movie takes place in the early ‘80s). Not one to let reality get in the way of a good dream, Dicky keeps dodging training sessions to hit the crack pipe, then diving out the back window of the crack house when his mother arrives to drag him home by the ear.

The first half of The Fighter is almost unbearably painful to watch. Director Russell captures the sad family dynamic of routine, denial and self-delusion here to a T. Bale is pathetic, but never scary. He’s mostly destroying himself with his behavior, believing when he’s high that he’s still a contender. At first, Bale’s buggy eyes are a distraction; you think he’s turned himself into a cartoon. But his performance gathers depth, grit and spirit. He reportedly studied the mannerisms of the real Dicky Eklund for many months before going full Method. By losing weight and turning chameleon yet again, he’s assured himself a place as this generation’s Gary Oldman.

Amy Adams is good as a flawed character who divides Micky’s loyalty between family and ambition. Director Russell describes her character as “a sexy bitch,” and that about covers it. It’s definitely a far cry from her turn in Enchanted. She doesn’t take crap from anyone, swears like a sailor (as, apparently, does everybody else in Lowell) and seems to have Micky’s best interests at heart.

Student of PacMan?: Mark Wahlberg on preparing for his role in The Fighter: “I wanted to look like a Manny Pacquiao-caliber fighter.”

The Fighter is based on a true story, and the Lowell locations have a distinctive grimy authenticity. Though Dicky claims to be the pride of Lowell, the town already has its own famous native son: Jack Kerouac, who also emerged from its clapboard houses and riverside factories to go the distance. (Of course, he also ended up a drunkard, moved back in with his mother in Lowell, and died at age 47, feeling like a failure. But that’s another story.)

Wahlberg reportedly trained with Pacquiao’s coach Freddie Roach in his own home gym to prepare for the movie. There’s a hint of Pacquiao’s grit and essential goodness in Ward’s character, but I wasn’t totally blown away by the fight scenes: David O. Russell hasn’t released a movie in a while, and the editing was choppy at times.

Still, every boxing movie is essentially the same. An underdog overcomes the odds and redeems himself, or others, while going the distance. If he (or she) doesn’t go the distance at the end, there are lots of bummed-out, disillusioned people in the audience — instead of the cheers that erupted in Shangri-La Cineplex during the final fight sequence when we watched. Here, in place of Bill Conti’s Gonna Fly Now we get a cherry-picked selection of rock classics: Led Zeppelin’s Good Times, Bad Times, the Rolling Stones’ Can’t You Hear Me Knocking and (crucially) Aerosmith’s Back in the Saddle during the training montage. Good to hear these classics on the big screen.

Wahlberg, though stuck in the backseat role at the beginning, goes head to head with Bale in later crucial scenes. If this were a title fight, I’d give him points for rising to Bale’s level. (As does Adams in a great porch scene toward the end.) In every boxing movie, the real opponent is the boxer’s fears, his doubts, his struggle to find the best within himself in the ring. Gutsy performances make The Fighter — which had only a limited run here  worth catching before the Metro Manila Film Festival takes over.

I couldn’t help wondering, though, how things went on the set of The Fighter: both David O. Russell and Christian Bale have reputations (immortalized on YouTube videos) for going ballistic and having temper tantrums. Apparently, the film project passed through the hands of Scorsese (who turned it down; too much like The Departed and Raging Bull, presumably) and Darren Aronofsky before Russell was finally picked. It seems the match-up between the two volatile talents was a draw: Russell is probably just happy to be working again after the loopy I Heart Huckabees and his on-camera meltdown with star Lily Tomlin. A handful of Golden Globe nominations suggest he could even become a contender again.