The Fighter

The Fighter is two movies for the price of one. The first is a real-life Rocky, as lovable lug Micky Ward (Mark ­Wahlberg) starts out as a ­dim-­witted loser but becomes a champ thanks to his ­marginally brighter ­girlfriend — that’s the usually sweet Amy Adams, ­valiantly playing against type as a foul-mouthed working-class barmaid with tattoos and denim hot pants.

It’s also a shouty, working-class family drama — think ­EastEnders, with more smoking, gallons of hair lacquer and enough ­leopard-skin on the women to clothe a tribe of Zulu warriors.

In order for Micky to triumph as an individual in the ring, he first has to take on his spectacularly dysfunctional family outside it — notably seven tough sisters, all seemingly unmarried, jobless and spoiling for a fight, his ­ferocious manager-mother (Melissa Leo) and his unreliable trainer-brother Dicky (Christian Bale).

Of these characters, the most colourful is Dicky, a one-time championship contender who sent Sugar Ray Leonard to the canvas and became a local legend.

Unfortunately, failure has gone to his head and he’s become an emaciated, wild-eyed ­crack addict who’s not much use to himself, let alone his brother.

Dicky’s being followed around by a camera crew, who he thinks are interested in him because he’s planning a ­comeback but actually want to record the decline and fall of a drug addict.

Bale steals the movie with a mesmerisingly goofy ­performance. It could easily be dismissed as a brazen attempt to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, except that we get a glimpse of the real Dicky during the end credits, and he’s just as much of a show-off.