Tag Archives: sports biopics

Fight Like a Girl

November 4, 2025 maddwolf Leave a comment

Christy

by George Wolf

No matter what you think of Sydney Sweeney the celebrity glamour girl, you’ve got to give her props for not resting on her sexy laurels. I’m not saying her turn in the bikini-friendly Anyone But You didn’t show fine comic timing, but in five of her last seven films, Sweeney has chosen roles that downplayed her curves and provided the chance to challenge herself as an actress.

Okay, so Echo Valley, Eden, American, Immaculate and Reality didn’t make the box office buzz, but Christy continues Sweeney’s ambitious trend. And right on the cusp of awards season, she doesn’t waste the opportunity to impress, leading a stellar ensemble in giving some well-deserved flowers to a trailblazer in women’s sports.

In 1989, Christy Salters was a bored girl from West Virginian who played a very physical brand of basketball and bristled when her mother (Merritt Weaver) obsessed over the whispers about Christy’s relationship with girlfriend Rosie (Jess Gabor). After winning $300 in a local Toughman contest, Christy is introduced to boxing trainer/future husband Jim Martin (Ben Foster), who guides her, exploits her and violently abuses her on Christy’s path toward becoming Don King’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” the first woman to headline a PPV undercard.

Boxing films may carry the most inherent cliches of all sports stories and director/co-writer David Michôd can only steer Christy around them about half the time. As Christy’s fame and fortune grew, the level of abuse she suffered only intensified, to a level that will surprise many. And when Michôd (Animal Kingdom, The Rover) finds small moments to accentuate with a dramatic camera angle or well-timed edit, the performances from Sweeney and Martin find resonant depth.

We’re used to exemplary work from Foster, and here he makes Jim Martin a slippery, violent gas-lighter with just enough relatable edges to avoid caricature. Sweeney responds with committed grit, and Christy’s battles both in and out of the ring elicit sympathy, respect and admiration.

Even so, the biggest challenge to telling a story so personal is the temptation of throwing too many formulaic haymakers. When Christy can do that, it becomes a film worthy of Martin’s fight.

Winner by split decision.

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Queen of the Waves

July 17, 2024 maddwolf Leave a comment

Young Woman and the Sea

by George Wolf

She died in 2003 at the age of 98. And to this day, the New York parade that honored her in 1926 is the largest the city has ever given to a single athlete, man or woman.

Her name was Trudy Ederle, and that year she became the first woman to swim the 21 miles across the English Channel.

Disney’s Young Woman and the Sea brings Trudy’s story to streaming with broad strokes of sports inspiration, and a grounded lead turn from Daisy Ridley that consistently keeps engagement afloat.

Ridley brings intimacy to Trudy’s early struggles against health issues and sexism, crafting a quiet determination to conquer both through swimming the Channel.

Director Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) and writer Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can) adapt Jeff Stout’s source biography with a familiar treatment of Trudy’s path to history. Solid supporting players (including Jeanette Hain, Kim Bodnia, Tilda Cobham-Hervey) create an Ederle family unit with an earned humanity. In contrast to forced underdog sports dramas such as the recent The Boys in the Boat, the family dynamics here feel earned, and that fuels the conflicts that come with the arrival of Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham).

Burgess – who swam the Channel himself years earlier – sees through the attempts by insecure males to sabotage Trudy’s quest, and commits himself to helping her succeed, even when the Ederle family wants to call it off. The period details are affecting, Rønning mines tension from an outcome we already know, and Ridley makes sure Trudy is inspirational without becoming a one note hero.

Young Woman and the Sea may never attempt to shake up the sports biography playbook, but it doesn’t feel like pandering, either. Disney obviously knows the game plan, and the film’s commitment to execution delivers a satisfying and overdue salute to a woman who earned it.

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Has He Landed Yet?

February 25, 2016 maddwolf Leave a comment

Eddie the Eagle

by Hope Madden

If you are a sucker for plucky underdog stories, has Eddie the Eagle got a movie for you! Based very loosely on the story of British Olympic ski jumper Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards, director Dexter Fletcher’s film is far more interested in feeling good than digging in.

Taron Egerton (Kingsmen) plays Eddie with as much charm as the screen can hold. The performance marks a serious physical transformation for the actor, but it’s the endearing characterization that keeps the film afloat.

As a wee, myopic lad back in blue collar Cheltenham, UK, routinely heads out the door to find a bus and follow his dreams of becoming an Olympian, it’s hard not to immediately fall for this sweetly tenacious character. He never loses that dream as he grows up, finding more realistic pathways toward his goals – he was actually among the best speed skiers in England. But obstacle upon obstacle eventually redirect him to ski jumping, regardless of the fact that he’s never ski jumped before, or that England had no ski jumping team.

The facts of Edwards’s journey toward the 1988 games in Calgary are blurred and blended in favor of an 80’s style comedy, and it’s hard not to think that a more honest adaptation of his truly unique road to becoming an Olympian might have made for a more interesting film. Instead, he goes to Germany, finds a begrudging mentor in a failed Olympic hopeful with a bad attitude and a drinking problem (Hugh Jackman), and eventually charms the world.

The film is endlessly sweet with a focus, unlike other sports biopics, not on competition and success, but on the struggle and the dream. Unfortunately, the frothy confection does more to emphasize something quaint rather than something heroic – and Edwards’s commitment to his goal truly was heroic.

It’s a soft hearted and well-meaning film, just as cliché-riddled as any other sports flick, but somehow the gentle underdog at the center of it all remains as easy to root for today as he was in ’88.

Maddwolf