The Fighter

The Fighter offers more evidence that Christian Bale will do just about anything for a role. He lost about 40 percent of his body weight for The Machinist, then immediately added 90 pounds of bulk to play Batman. But simply achieving the body of a character is not the same as embodying a character, and Bale is so brassy and volatile as a crack-addled former fighter that he nearly drowns out everything around him. Mark Wahlberg—nominally the lead—doesn’t benefit from Bale’s portrayal, although Melissa Leo and Amy Adams fare better, presumably in Adams’ case because she shares so few scenes with Bale. It isn’t that Bale is bad; he’s simply done way too much. The rest of the film is kind of flimsy, including cheap-looking boxing and a bantamweight script, so there’s not much else to focus on other than Bale’s over-the-top performance.