The life and the incredible career of Christy Martin, the most successful female boxer of the 1990s.

Hollywood loves their Boxing movies and the latest one comes from Australian director David Michod, centering on one of the first well known female boxers – Christy Martin – who made her name in the 1990s. Like most Boxing movies, this goes behind the scenes to tell the story of her background and how she got into Boxing, before following her career through its highs and lows, with the impact on her personal life playing an equally large part in the narrative. Martin is played by Sydney Sweeney, who adds another strong performance to an acting resume that is becoming impressively varied, and I thought this was very good, if a little conventional in its approach.

I wasn’t familiar with Christy Martin before watching ‘Christy’, so this story was new to me, which I think does often help with sports movies where you go on the journey with the character more so than if you knew how their career panned out. That made the Boxing scenes click for me, but it also made her personal life particularly compelling, and this is where ‘Christy’ is at its best. It’ll be no surprise to anyone familiar with her story, or even if you’ve seen the trailer, to know there is a domestic abuse element to the drama and it can be pretty brutal viewing at times. That comes from her trainer and husband Jim Martin, a man 20 years her senior who is controlling from the outset, but whose evilness isn’t apparent until later in the film. He’s played by Ben Foster who is excellent and should be in the conversation for a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

I also enjoyed Chad L. Coleman’s turn as Boxing promoter Don King, who played a part in bringing woman’s boxing to Pay Per View, in an era where Boxing had many big draws on the Men’s side of things (Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield etc). ‘Christy’s’ familiarity is both its strength and weakness, hewing to the conventions of a genre that any film fan will have seen many times before, but I did enjoy it for its performances and the final act packs a fair punch as Christy’s boxing career fades into the rearview mirror and her husband’s abuse becomes more prominent in the narrative.  

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: David Michôd

Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian, Ethan Embry and Chad L. Coleman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt32323252/