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The Mickey Rourke comeback was pretty swift. Darren Aronofsky cast Rourke as a fading professional wrestler struggling with both his career and day-to-day life. It was a compelling, if dark movie, though dark is generally Aronofsky’s thing. Rourke got an Oscar nomination, but didn’t win. He then seemed to make things difficult on “Iron Man 2,” and faded back out of the mainstream. Aronofsky had more success helping bolster the renaissance of Brendan Fraser, even though “The Whale” is a worse movie than “The Wrestler.” Chalk that up to the fact that, you know, people seem to actually like Brendan Fraser. This was probably the first instance of Martin Scorsese not winning an Oscar and people questioning the decision. Of course, now that Scorsese does have his Best Director and Best Picture wins and Robert Redford is dead, maybe film fans will be cool with “Ordinary People” winning. “Raging Bull” is both a seminal boxing movie and a remarkable character study. While Scorsese didn’t get an Oscar, Robert De Niro won for Best Actor for his turn as Jake LaMotta. Ever since leaving his “high school heartthrob” days behind him, Zac Efron has been looking for roles that serve him well. His ability to get absolutely ripped helped him land the role in biopic drama “The Iron Claw.” He plays Kevin Von Erich, a member of the tragedy-laden wrestling family the Von Erichs. While the awards love didn’t arrive, Efron was quite good in the movie, and it was successful at the box office for an A24 film. When you think of Stephen Merchant from the original “The Office,” (the UK version, to be clear) you surely think to yourself, “I bet that guy could really nail a wrestling biopic.” Well, he did! “Fighting with My Family” is no masterpiece, but it’s a well-done movie about the professional wrestler then known as Paige in WWE. Of course, a casting coup helped. In the lead role of Saraya “Paige” Bevis, they cast a relative unknown by the name of Florence Pugh. You might think it doesn’t bode well for a movie if the boxer at the center of the film is overshadowed by other members of the cast. However, that actually works to the benefit of “The Fighter.” While Mark Wahlberg plays boxer Micky Ward, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won Oscars for their turns as Micky’s half-brother and mother, respectively. Both of those were warranted wins, for the record. Sure, they aren’t professionals, but they are an organized club! Which is a little odd for a movie built around a quasi-anarchist group, but “Fight Club” isn’t exactly intellectually rigorous. It’s also not a film where most people land on, “Ehh, it’s pretty good” when discussing. That’s where we are, though! The comedic, somewhat-but-nebulously-satiric film featuring a club where a bunch of dudes beat each other up was a flop at the box office, but it has since become a cult favorite. Having Brad Pitt in 1999 front and center certainly helped. It made Sylvester Stallone’s career, for better or worse. Rocky Balboa is film’s most-iconic boxer, and “Rocky” famously won Best Picture for 1976. Stallone also wrote the movie, but by dint of starring in a Best Picture winner he wrote, he forever wanted to have his creative fingerprints all over every project from there on out. That would yield some questionable results in the long run. Still, “Rocky” is a Best Picture winner about a boxer, and it’s impressive to be sure. Speaking of movies that won Best Picture that are about boxing! However, while “Rocky” is an underdog story, “Million Dollar Baby” is a bummer of a drama more than any bit of uplifting sports flick. It was an Oscar favorite, but consider this a spoiler for a 20-year-old movie: A lot of “Million Dollar Baby” is about the boxer played by Hilary Swank suffering on life support after breaking her neck in a fluke in-ring accident and wanting Clint Eastwood to pull the plug. It’s not merely a fighting tournament. This combat puts your mortality to the test. They had previously made movies based on the massively-popular fighting game series, but they had cut corners a bit. 2021’s “Mortal Kombat” embraced the games with both arms. That is to say, the movie is a gory mess, and it is for the best. David Mamet is known as a writer of both plays and films that are terse, vulgar, cynical, and often acclaimed. He both wrote and directed “Redbelt,” a movie about MMA. Well, it is a world that involves a lot of men and “masculinity,” so that tracks with his thematic interests. The movie is far from perfect, but Chiwetel Ejiofor is (unsurprisingly) really good in it. Plus, believe it or not, Tim Allen is in the movie in a dramatic role. It’s always interesting when a small film is able to make a career. Danny McBride was truly a complete unknown when he and his buddy Jody Hill made “The Foot Fist Way” for nothing. McBride’s comedic persona was already partially in place, and the film grabbed the attention of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, who hopped on board as producers basically to get it a real theatrical release. Unsurprisingly, McBride plays an arrogant idiot with a bad temper, this time around a Taekwondo black belt with a dojo in a small North Carolina town. “Redbelt” was the okay-to-pretty-good MMA movie that scratched an itch for MMA fans looking for a movie about the sport they enjoyed. “Warrior” is the good movie that really stood out and probably remains the best movie set in the world of MMA. You may know director Gavin O’Connor as the Ben Affleck whisperer (he directed both “Accountant” movies and “The Way Back”), but he’s also directed “Miracle” and “Warrior.” He knows his way around a sports movie. While Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton star as estranged brothers who are both MMA fighters, Nick Nolte is the one who earned an Oscar nomination. The quintessential Bruce Lee movie, “Enter the Dragon” is mostly remembered for Lee’s fight scenes. The plot to the movie is almost secondary. There’s some spy stuff nonsense right out of James Bond, but conveniently that work requires Bruce Lee entering a martial arts tournament on the private island of the movie’s villain. “Bloodsport” is dumb as hell, but as far as dumb-as-hell movies involving a bunch of fight scenes go, it’s an entertaining one. It’s peak Jean-Claude Van Damme in that sense. JCVD enters an underground fight tournament called Kumite and then, well, a bunch of stuff happens. Mostly cool fight scenes. There are four “Bloodsport” sequels. Each and every one of them is skippable. After becoming a movie star, Will Smith wanted to get himself some Oscar love. Starring in a biopic of Muhammad Ali directed by Michael Mann made sense on that front. The movie is a bit too long, which is not uncommon for Mann, but it turned out well. Smith did indeed get an Oscar nomination, but he did not win. He wouldn’t win until he played Richard Williams, though of course that’s not the most-notable thing he did that night. Gladiatorial fights are still fights! Plus, they got good crowds! Of course, there is more to Ridley Scott’s sweeping epic than gladiator fights. There’s Maximus’ fight for redemption and revenge, plus assorted palace intrigue in the Roman Empire. “Gladiator” was a massive success, winning Best Picture and Best Actor while bringing in a ton of money. Scott even got to direct a sequel eventually. After “Napoleon Dynamite,” Jared Hess essentially had a blank check. He decided to make a movie about Jack Black as a friar who secretly is also a luchador to try and make money for an orphanage. While we think “Napoleon Dynamite” is a bit overrated by general consensus, “Nacho Libre” had the benefit of starring Jack Black, and also that Black’s buddy Mike White (of “White Lotus” fame) did enough writing on the screenplay to earn a credit. After years of making big-budget action movies, some successful and some fiascos, Dwayne Johnson decided to exercise his acting chops. Benny Safdie cast him as early MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine.” The film is intended to mimic the documentary it is based on, and as such is arguably a bit slight. That being said, it is still quite good, and Johnson does give his best acting performance in quite some time. Although, we did like that first “Jumanji” movie he was in.
