Warrior ***'

Warrior.  Grr.  It's manly.  It's tough.  It features a Tom Hardy so beefy his shoulders have shoulders.  But how will it fare in the ring against what is widely regarded (by me) as the best sports film ever made: Cool Runnings?  GO TO WAR!

Round 1: The Sport.  Bobsleigh vs Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
Cool Runnings and Warrior are both about sport.  As sports films go, this is a good start.  But, even better, they are both about slightly obscure sport.  I don't care about football, or boxing, or baseball (apart from that one with Madonna.  And Field of Dreams, of course).  But bobsleigh - that's exciting.  It's a bit exotic and glamorous, in a lycra-clad sort of way.  And mixed martial arts?  That's even more exciting and mysterious.  Who's heard of mixed martial arts?  Oh, except for the fact that it is also known as cage fighting.  (I searched for cage fighting on wikipedia and got redirected to the MMA page, so it must be true).  And cage fighting makes me think of Alex Reid, ex-husband of Jordan, and it therefore rapidly loses its mysterious charm.

Round 1 to Cool Runnings.

Round 2: The Coach.  John Candy vs Nick Nolte
Every sports film worth its stripes needs a down and out coach who is offered a second chance at glory.  Cool Runnings has Irv Blitzer (John Candy), a disgraced former bobsledding gold medallist (this thought alone has to be worth extra points) who gets approached by the Jamaican bobsleigh team to coach them to victory at the Olympics.

Warrior has Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), a disgraced former fighting coach who is approached by his estranged son, beefy Tom Hardy, to train him up for Sparta, the big MMA competition.  He's also an alcoholic.  He's also also the father of the other fighter we care about as well.  Ooh, juicy.

I just can't call it between them.  Round 2 has to be a draw.

Round 3: We're Gonna Need a Montage

All present and correct in both films.

Round 3 is a draw.

Round 4: Unlikely success of the underdog
Cool Runnings has the Jamaican bobsleigh team.  I think that's all we need to know.

Warrior has beefy Tom Hardy's brother, Brendan.  He's a school teacher.  He doesn't belong here.  He's just in it for the money so his family don't lose their home.  How can he possibly make it through round 1?  Trouble is, we know from the trailer that he gets to the final, so that he and his brother can sort out all their family problems by punching each other to near-unconsciousness.  So when Brendan meets Russian man mountain Koba, who we are told he can't possibly beat, it's not that much of a surprise when he does.

And Cool Runnings has the Jamaican bobsleigh team.  Round 4 to Cool Runnings

Round 5: The Pep Talk


Cool Runnings: "I see pride.  I see power.  I see a bad ass mother who won't take no crap off nobody."

YES.  Inspirational.  I try to use it as my own personal mantra when I'm not so overwhelmed by doubt that I forget how to form words.

Warrior: "You can do this"

Oh.  Um.  Quiet determination has its place as well I suppose...

ROUND 5, AND VICTORY, TO COOL RUNNINGS (because an MMA title fight has five rounds, and we want to do this authentically don't we?  Otherwise what is the point of this slightly laboured fight metaphor?)

But a quick pep talk in the corner for Warrior, while it catches its breath and has some water and an orange segment.  In most sports films, we follow one competitor, root for them all the way, and hope that they will win in the final.  But in Warrior our sympathies are pretty evenly split between the two finalists, and it is much more interesting than the average sports film for it.  Yes, it's been bashed about a bit by Cool Runnings, but come on, it's held its own.  There's no shame in coming second to perfection.

A Town Called Panic ***'

Don’t judge a book by its cover?  And don’t judge a film by its milk advert.  A new personal code I intend to live by.  I find this advert quite unbelievably annoying, but 70 minutes of a basically identical premise is somehow extremely funny.

It’s Horse’s birthday, and Cowboy and Indian have forgotten to buy him a present.  They decide to build him a barbecue, but don’t have enough bricks so buy some off the internet.  But, zut alors, they accidentally buy 50 million bricks instead of 50.  This leads to a manic adventure taking in the centre of the earth, the North Pole, and the depths of the ocean, with barely time to breathe.

Watching A Town Called Panic feels a bit like watching Postman Pat, or Pingu, on speed.  By the end I was exhausted.  The animation is delightfully crap, and hides what was undoubtedly an enormous amount of hard work.  It’s not quite Adam and Joe Show levels of charming unsophistication, but it doesn’t feel far off.  (Yes, I know that reference is about ten years out of date now, and isn’t really relevant anyway, but I wanted to link this clip in somehow, just because it makes me laugh).

If you like your comedy clever and highbrow, then this film is not really for you.  If, however, you want to escape in silliness for an hour, with the main thought running through your head being ‘this is actually insane’, then I highly recommend.

I would have given this four stars, but took off half because I think you have to be in a very specific mood to enjoy this, otherwise funny could too easily become being-repeatedly-bashed-over-the-head irritating.