Always on Sunday: Warrior

Sundays feature a movie review. The column's title is a play on the title of Jules Dassin's 1960 film, Never on Sunday.

My wife wouldn't watch Warrior with me. Too violent. Men going to war in an octagonal ring defined by cyclone fencing?
    But up front, before I say another word, I loved it.
    Would I love to go to an actual mixed martial arts tournament? No, I don't think so. Not even if offered free tickets and all expenses paid.
    For, despite the carefully studied and staged realism of the fight scenes in Warrior (about ten of them), the violence is acted, not real. And none of the actors got hurt (badly).

Warrior (2011: Gavin O'Connor) [The youngest son (Tom Hardy) of an alcoholic former boxer (Nick Nolte) returns home, where he's trained by his father for competition in a mixed martial arts tournament—a path that puts the fighter on a collision corner with his older brother (Joel Edgerton)] [E] 6-3-2012

    Actors Hardy and Edgerton had to be schooled intensively in mixed martial arts. The other actors in the ring were professionals. They had to be schooled to do their thing for make-believe, not for real. Their schooling emphasized not maiming Hardy or Edgerton.

You know, actually, I don't need to say any more. You're either going to watch Warrior or not based on

• what I've already said,
• the short summary above (from the Internet Movie Database; and there's a more detailed plot summary there if you need to know more),
• my rating the movie Excellent, and
• how closely your taste in movies matches mine.

    If you study my list of Last 100 Last Movies Watched and compare your ratings of its movies you've seen with my ratings of them, you can develop a sense of how well our tastes match.)