Warrior

Believe me when I tell you a movie featuring a plot with an alcoholic father seeking redemption for his past evils, a Marine with a mysterious history, a guy fighting to save his house and pay his daughter's medical bills, two brothers secretly on a collision course in a winner-take-all tournament and more would even have the writers at All My Children guffawing and saying, "PUH-lease!" (somewhere Susan Lucci is rolling her eyes and commenting how this is unrealistic).

However, for all of the melodramatic twists and turns designed to manipulate every emotion in your heart and soul, Warrior is pretty good.

Tom Hardy stars as Tommy - a troubled former Marine who has returned home with a new cause. With no hope, no prospects and no real skills, Tommy has decided to do the one thing he knows how. He is going to fight.

A $5 million winner-take-all mixed martial arts tournament is being held in Atlantic City, and Tommy, who used to be a champion wrestler (and is built like a brick house), has entered, with his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), training him, just like in the old days. However, this all brings back the troubled history between them and Tommy's brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), who also has entered the tournament to save his house and pay for his daughter's medical expenses.

Who will win?

Can the family make up, or will this tear them further apart?

Hardy, Edgerton and Nolte add real meaning and emotion to those soap opera plots, which is why even the most cynical of viewers is willing to go on this emotional roller coaster ride of manipulation and appreciate the outcome. Hardy amazingly makes you believe Tommy is an animal who could never be satisfied in his pursuit to destroy every opponent, but also brings an aspect of fear and pain as he remembers the past relationship with Paddy, and trepidation about it all happening again. It's tough to show the tender side of such a brutal, aggressive beast, but Hardy has the ability to deliver with a subtlety that isn't in the script.

Then, Edgerton is the perfect underdog. Of all of the characters in Warrior, he's the one the audience can relate to. Trying to make a few extra dollars to pay for a house that has lost its value, cover the mounting medical bills and make ends meet as the economy squeezes this family, we already are rooting for Brendan, but Edgerton makes it feel real. Like Hardy, he doesn't deliver an over-the-top demonstrative performance. He just lets the material breathe and flow through him.

Of course, that is what Nick Nolte has been doing for decades, and might get an Oscar nomination for his performance in Warrior. You see the pain on his face as Paddy regrets his past actions, and tries to confront two sons unwilling to accept his apologies. Yet, he also fills the character with a strength of conviction and will when needed at the right moments.

However, Warrior is a very good movie mostly for the ability of co-writer/director Gavin O'Connor and his crew to create this hard scrabble, gritty world, both in look and through the writing. We see though guys pushed to the edge. The environments lack any semblance of glamour. Even the film on the screen looks beaten and battered, not some pristine digital view. You feel like you are in the training facilities, in the cage with the fighters and back stage with men in those quiet, tense moments before they face the ultimate battle. O'Connor creates the perfect atmosphere.

Eventually, the twists do get to be too much, but you are so invested in the movie and the characters you won't want to walk out without knowing how it ends.

Warrior is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense mixed martial arts fighting, some language and thematic material.