‘Christy’ Fails to Deliver a Knockout Blow

Sydney Sweeney is a one-woman culture war right now — and until very recently that wasn’t even really her fault. So if we can put aside the fact that she may or may not have doubled down on an ad campaign that scanned as pro-eugenics and may or may not be dating Taylor Swift-nemesis Scooter Braun, she’s a good, deadpan actress who takes worthwhile risks: like TV’s Euphoria or the bloody finish of Immaculate.

Christy was one of those risks; in an Oscar season surprisingly rife with offbeat sports biopics (The Smashing Machine, Marty Supreme, each by one of the Safdie brothers), Sweeney inhabits the living boxing legend and LGBTQ+ heroine Christy Martin née Salters. Due to her extracurricular baggage, some corners of the internet are rejoicing that Christy is looking like a commercial flop; I’m just disappointed that with such electrifying source material and a strong director, it turned out so incurious and by-the-numbers.

Christy ★★1/2  (2.5/5 stars)
Directed by: David Michôd
Written by: Mirrah Foulkes & David Michôd
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian
Running time: 135 mins

Sweeney herself is good in the rumpled, brunette-wig title role, neither earth-shattering nor embarrassing but grounded and gleeful when the earthbound script actually permits. The viewer is privy to neither her realization that she likes fighting nor that she likes women; the closest thing to an insight we get besides Salters’ shitty, homophobic family is “all I knew is I had to beat the shit out of that bitch before she had a chance to hit me.”

She wins local matches and punches a classmate who calls her a lesbian, while the girl she’s with (Jess Gabor) gets a boyfriend shortly after being made to see a priest. Her palpable anger attracts local trainer and eventual husband Jim Martin (a dastardly Ben Foster), who tells a boxer in his first scene to break her rib if he has to. (Spoiler: He doesn’t get the chance.) Jim’s never trained a female boxer but quickly learns how to manipulate her, and Christy goes along with it when he says he could make her the greatest in a sport where women didn’t exist. “Compared to who?” she asks.

Her mother Joyce (Merritt Wever) is almost as emotionally bankrupt as her daughter and seems mainly supportive of Christy’s career choice because she’s offered rent-free lodging.

Soon Christy is dressed in hot pink with a matching car, jumping up and down every time she KO’s an opponent, and trash-talking so heartily she even crosses a line with Don King (Chad L. Coleman, the best thing in the film and remembering some of his boxing energy as Cutty in The Wire). But she’s never really given an opportunity to cut loose and even the scenes in the ring fail to elicit excitement or much personality. The filmmakers were clearly aiming for I, Tonya, which has weirder and crueler energy.

As Christy treads water past the two-hour mark, it gives her abusive husband a little too much screen time, and while it downplays nothing — including his gruesome attempt to murder her — the film can’t seem to find enough interest outside of her darkest days, which overlapped significantly with her glory days.

The film’s biggest missed opportunity is not lingering on her relationship with Lisa Holewyne (Katy O’Brian, who was given a bigger chunk of the superior Love Lies Bleeding). They begin by fighting in the ring and end by exchanging rings. We see way too little of Salters’ rapport with her current spouse despite its built-in spice — how many athletes have gone onto marry their rival?

The transition from Christy’s constant anger and suffering, no matter how justified, to actually loving and trusting someone, is never explored, which means Christy never leaves its suffering-porn discomfort zone. At one meta moment, someone namedrops Hilary Swank, whose exemplary Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don’t Cry are both echoed here to diminishing returns. Neither Sweeney nor the supporting cast ever really hit a bum note, but a few of them deserved a better shot than a glorified Lifetime movie that’s too boxed-in to represent boxing.