In “Christy,” Sydney Sweeney’s only fighting herself

Considering what happened to the intrepid Christy Martin the fighter who put women s boxing on the map in the s and paved the way for countless others in her sport there is no satisfaction in disliking her Sydney Sweeney-starring biopic Christy At times the film is as hokey as they come a ramshackle project built on half-spun ideas baffling performance choices a scatterbrained script and a barrel of old wigs purchased from a defunct cosmetology school s liquidation sale In other moments far rarer ones Christy is briefly moving a tale of how easily naive self-determination can be manipulated by misogynist scoundrels lurking in the corner of a shadowy boxing gym To say these two elements ever meet long enough to spar would be erroneous Put into the same boxing ring to duke it out the movie s unintentional silliness easily KO s its blips of emotional gravity But it s not just that the script is formulaic so much so that we ve seen a similar story play out on the silver screen just last month but that its star doesn t carry the same conviction as the film s subject Martin a complete amateur who got her start collecting meager prizes in local Toughwoman contests swung through gender walls and crowds of deniers to prove her worth as a boxer And while Sweeney has certainly faced her own share of critics throughout her relatively young career director David Mich d s film is eager to conflate these two stories Courtesy of Black Bear Eddy Chen Sydney Sweeney as Christy Martin in Christy If Christy is Sweeney sending a message through her art it may as well be the cinematic equivalent of Dogs Playing Poker an image so often remixed and regurgitated that it s devoid of any compelling meaning Here Sweeney takes a big leap from her admirable work in small-screen dramas and rom-coms to an ostensible Oscar carriage diving into the deep end with the same fearless certainty Martin boasted in the s But much like boxing mere confidence is not enough to win Acting requires a performer to constantly train flex and build their muscles It s not enough to be a fighter you have to believe in what you re fighting for Sweeney has only continued to play coy about the disagreement surrounding her American Eagle great jeans ad and its whirlwind of murky politics dancing around the topic for the first time in a GQ interview earlier this week And while actors aren t required to be activists evading a concrete announcement while promoting a film about a woman who has devoted her post-boxing career to social advocacy gives Christy and Sweeney an incontrovertible dissonance In a role that demands depth and dogma Sweeney displays little of either making Christy feel like a vessel for someone else s ideas Related Sydney Sweeney knows exactly what she s doing That this is the same criticism Sweeney faced during the American Eagle ad backlash doesn t exactly help the film s scenario and I should note it would be unfair to correlate the film and its star without merit But consider the fact that GQ published a video interview this week where Sweeney equated herself to Martin because Sweeney finds herself in a lot of battles both in front and not in front of the world noting that she related to the character through that lens A insufficient moments later in the interview GQ features director Katherine Stoeffel asks Sweeney if she s concerned people won t want to see Christy because of the conflict surrounding the advertisement Sweeney admitted that if someone doesn t want to see the film because of the debate she hopes something else could open their eyes to being open to art and open to learning Sweeney then mentions that when she has something she wants to say she does it through her art If Christy is Sweeney s message through art it may as well be the cinematic equivalent of Dogs Playing Poker an image so often remixed and regurgitated that it s devoid of any compelling meaning The film s most of remarkable feat is that it manages to fit both everything and nothing into its plodding minutes even the brief so bad it might be good thrill wears off in a flash In no time Christy wins her first fight is accused of lesbianism by her overbearing conservative mother Joyce Merritt Wever and readies herself to leave home in search of a better life in the amateur boxing ring Soon after she s referred to James Martin Ben Foster a boxing coach who has no interest in training a woman until he sees what a mean punch Christy can throw Now there are dollar signs in his eyes and a hollow hum in the space where his heart should be as if to suggest she might be a woman he could love if a man like James knew how to love anyone Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Subject As Christy climbs the ranks in her sport James greed intensifies He begins to skim cash off the top of her prize money hiding it in a tin can in their backyard And his possessiveness extends to Christy too At his coercion Christy endures strange semi-psychosexual mind games physical abuse and encouraged drug use None of this feels as extreme or horrifying as it should though because Mich d and co-writer Mirrah Foulkes screenplay is too hyper-focused on hitting all of the standard biopic beats In the ring Christy rises she falls she stumbles and gets back up again all the points needed to convince the audience of her resilience are there But what makes Christy s story so remarkable yet singularly tragic is that as brave and brilliant a fighter as she was she had none of that agency in her marriage Mich d occasionally comes close to suggesting a strange power play is going on here where James is bullying Christy to fight harder during matches by traumatizing her himself Still the film never asserts that idea clearly enough for it to stick Being dragged online for ad copy pandering to conservative ideals isn t the same thing as living and surviving the torture Martin endured and refusing to disavow the response to that ad copy doesn t make Sweeney a renegade like Martin either Sweeney has a tough enough job cut out for her trying to act her way out of a paper-thin script but this one-note ridiculously monotone performance does her no favors Sweeney s hairpieces change more than her inflection does throughout the film Moments of dramatic tension hold the same amount of passion as Christy s quieter heartbroken moments which is to say certain but not nearly enough to make an impression When the film demands that Sweeney cry she can cry with the best of them But there s no severity or immediacy in her tears They are mere dramatic deceits liquid coming on cue As Christy Sweeney s face looks as blank and emotionless as it does in the GQ interview when the media training kicks in and her expression turns cold It s not enough for an actor to disappear from the viewer s sight That s like sawing the magician in half and never putting them back together again Courtesy of Black Bear Eddy Chen Sydney Sweeney as Christy Martin in Christy But the real tell is Wever whose performance as Christy s mother is so outrageous and pitch-perfect that it took me a moment to get a handle on it Initially Joyce s mock turtlenecks and hairspray-stiff wigs combined with the featherlight Zelda Rubenstein-esque voice Wever is putting on seem like another car crashing into a pile-up To add insult to injury here s the the majority camp performance to hit the silver screen in a minute And while I d never turn up my nose at high camp especially in a film that demands it as badly as Christy Wever s performance slowly turns into something else entirely Slowly one realizes that she s really impeccable in this role the perfect fit to play a homophobic imperious Virginian mother Wever imbues every word with a subtle nefariousness bringing a depth to the film that it so desperately requirements In a film so terrible Wever stands out as its only bright spot initially making her performance seem uniquely bad and strangely contrived when in fact it s easily the best of the bunch We need your help to stay independent Subscribe currently to help Salon s progressive journalism Wever s on-screen choices make it clear exactly who Joyce is even with little screentime But we never really get to know Christy We can certainly understand that she s supposed to come off as ardent and unyielding even surmising that she s unsure of how to love anyone else because of how improperly she s been loved herself But ironically enough none of the characters who communicate these themes have their name in the title Sweeney clearly cares about Martin s story she s a producer on the film and when she speaks about Martin s life it s evident that there is at the very least an element of passion here But it seems that Sweeney hasn t quite squared how to bring that enthusiasm with her beyond surface parallels Just because Sweeney and Martin have both been in the spotlight doesn t mean that Sweeney is the right choice to tell a story of this magnitude Being dragged online for ad copy pandering to conservative ideals isn t the same thing as living and surviving the torture Martin endured and refusing to disavow the response to that ad copy doesn t make Sweeney a renegade like Martin either If Sweeney s going to let her art do the talking she better make sure it s saying something first Read more about biopics Deliver Me from Nowhere aims for truth but loses the soul of Springsteen Angelina Jolie shines in Maria with a star power too grand for CGI constraints Al Yankovic gets the weird biopic he deserves The post In Christy Sydney Sweeney s only fighting herself appeared first on Salon com