Christy

The road has never been easy for women in combat sports. Of all the male-dominated forms of athletics out there, boxing has long been considered among the most exclusionary to women. That didn’t stop Christy Martin, who arrived on the boxing scene in the 1990s, became a pioneer of the sport, and was among the first of her gender to attract major media attention for it — undoubtedly a subject well-deserving of a biopic for her efforts. Yet David Michôd’s Christy, made very much as a performance vehicle for woman-of-the-hour Sydney Sweeney, seems less interested in its protagonist’s role in changing the sport of boxing than it does in her personal relationship and familial struggles that came about because of it. That might be okay, were it not so relentlessly dour — one of those movies that strives for old-school grittiness but has little visual style or fresh detail to match that ambition.

The film begins in a rough-and-tumble Southern joint circa 1989, where Christy wins $300 in an amateur boxing match. A pummelling Tennessee native known as ‘The Coal Miner’s Daughter’ in the ring (her father really was one), she would go on to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated and excel at making pay-per-view work for her at a time when no-one thought a woman could sell a title fight. Martin, who advised on the film, is played with dedication and intensity by Sweeney, whose physical transformation has inspired plenty of comment, but who is given less to work with from the material than one might hope.

It doesn’t always make for convincing viewing.

The film charts the young woman’s rise to fame concurrent with an increasingly violent, coercive and abusive relationship with her much older trainer-husband Jim (played with damnable force by Ben Foster). As he makes himself inextricable from her financial and career success, he pushes his wife’s image away from any possible rumoured bisexuality or queerness to make her more ‘palatable’ to the public, and denies her any agency or ability to truly enjoy the fruits of her labour.

Sweeney is clearly consciously turning away from her blonde-bombshell image and de-glamming to highlight her seriousness as an actor here — in a move not unlike Margot Robbie in I, Tonya, or even Charlize Theron in Monster. It works to varying degrees — Sweeney herself is Southern, and can play a plain-speaking, down-home gal with a bit of protective bravado and vulnerability at her core. But the criminal under-use of Katy O’Brian as her major female opponent Lisa Holewyne, and Michôd’s apparent lack of interest in making this film more than a relationship drama with some boxing around it, leave it rudderless. Everyone’s trying very hard in Christy, in the ring and out of it, but it doesn’t always make for convincing viewing.