It’s very rare to see a sports film at the VIFF. Christy was one of the feature attractions of the Festival. It’s more than a film about a pioneering female boxer.
We see Christy Salters-Martin just about ready for a fight. She talks about all she went through to get there. The film flashes back to 1986 in her hometown in West Virginia. A teenage Christy Salters is into sports. She also spends a lot of time with a girl named Rosie. Rumors are going around that they’re more than best friends. The rumors upset the mother. One night, Christy attends a fighting group. She caught the attention of a boxing promoter named Larry. He believes she’s worth promoting. Christy is reluctant at first, feeling it won’t give her much of a future, but she eventually accepts.
Larry finds a local boxing coach named Jim Martin. Jim is not at all interested in training a female boxer at first but when he sees Christy punch, he sees promise in her. He believes with his coaching, she can become the best female boxer in the world. As Jim trains Christy, but he’s very suspicious of her behavior. He notices she’s a lesbian and she’s more masculine than other women. He gets her to wear a pink uniform with pink boxer trunks and give her the name the ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter.’ He even gets her to marry him. Over the years, Christy does become the top female boxer in the world. She even gets legendary boxing promoter Don King to pay attention to her and promote her in 1996. It’s after that Christy helps to pioneer the sport of women’s boxing. She becomes known for her fierce fighting and her trash-talking of her opponents. She’s also noted for calling some of her opponents ‘lesbians’ despite the secret she’s hiding.
Things change in 2003 as in one of the most hyped-up fights in women’s boxing, Christy will face the challenge of Laila Ali, daughter of legend Muhammad Ali. Once again, her title of World Champion is on the line. In a highly broadcasted fight, she loses by KO. The marriage between her and Jim Martin also starts showing friction as Jim has been getting more and more controlling over her and even abusive. Adding to the difficulty, she tries to get her mother to listen to her situation but she is so flattered by Jim, she sooner takes Jim’s word over Christy’s.
In 2010, Christy is still training in the gym, but Jim is busy training new younger fighters, male and female. Christy is unhappy about this because she still wants to fight. Jim also notices Christy meeting up again with high school friend Rosie. Jim, fueled by cocaine he and Christy both do, starts becoming more controlling of her and watches her every move, threatening to kill her. He even gets Christy to participate in super-lewd videos which upsets her mother. Once again, the mother takes Jim’s word over Christy’s.
Soon Christy develops a bigger sense of assertiveness at the urging of Rosie. Jim responds to it one day by stabbing her four times and shooting her. Miraculously, Christy survived and is able to get help from a driver to the hospital. At the hospital, Rosie is by her bedside, to the disgust of her mother. With the family by her bedside, the father and son care about her condition but the biggest thing her mother cares about is her being a lesbian. It’s there she finally puts her mother in her place. Christy recovers faster than the doctors expect. She returns to the gym and is greeted warmly by all. They are also shocked that she wants to get back into fighting. Jim is put on trial where Christy delivers a scathing speech making him confront what he did and is sentenced to 25 years in prison. The film ends with the start of one of Christy’s fights!
Normally when you go to see a biopic of an athlete, one would expect it to be about their long rise to the top. Christy is different. It does showcase a story of a boxer who wins and pioneers women’s boxing to new heights. In actuality, it becomes more about Christy Salters breaking free from her controlling and abusive manager at a time that was now or never. It’s also of Christy assuming her identity and dealing with a mother who cared more about what she thought than what Christy felt. You could understand why that fight at the end was important to Christy, win or lose.
There have been films of female boxers before. The two best known are 2000’s Girlfight and 2004 Best Picture Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby. This film is a biopic of a legendary female boxer. At a film festival, one would expect to have films that take filmmaking to new or unique artistic directions. This film isn’t as artistically inclined as most of the films at this Film Festival. One unique direction the film goes into is that it focuses on Christy and the intensity of what she goes through. It focuses on her fighting wins, her fighting losses and her abusive relationship with Jim.
It may be common for any protagonist of a film to dominate the focus of the whole film, but it’s important here as it is Christy’s tough will that gets her through the hardest of times. The abuse she endured at the hands of Jim Martin is just as important as her fights. You can understand why that fight in 2010 with Christy at the age of 42 was an important part of the film. If there’s a message to sense in this film, it has to be Christy Salters is a woman of many victories but her biggest victory was outside the boxing ring.
This film is great work from director David Michod. With the story from Katherine Fugate, Michod co-adapts the story with wife Mirrah Foulkes and creates a film that will keep you intrigued from start to finish. He does a great job in getting the actors to do their parts well. Sydney Sweeney is not only unrecognizable as Christy, but she delivers an excellent performance from start to finish. She will let you know she is not simply performing the role of an athlete. It’s about a person and her grit. Ben Foster is also as unrecognizable as Jim Martin and he succeeds in making him into a cocaine-fueled controlling megalomaniac. You will end up hating Jim. Merritt Wever is also great and hard to recognize herself as the mother Joyce Salters. It’s completely different from her Nurse Jackie role she’s known for but she does a great job of making the mother look like the parent you can’t trust. Cinematographer Germain McMicking did a great job of the shooting angles and the close-ups. The musical score of hits mixed with original music from Antony Partos fit the film well, but some hit songs were years behind the year of the scene!
Christy is more than just a biopic of a successful boxer. It’s a film that shows Christy Salters had bigger battles outside the ring. It may be imperfect, but it is a compelling story.
Jon The Blogcentric 