Writers: Mirrah Foulkes, Katherine Fugate and David Michôd
Director: David Michôd
David Michôd doesn’t mess around in his biopic of female boxer Christy Martin (née Salters). Within minutes, the so-called Daughter of a Coalminer is winning bouts and carving out a name for herself in America in the early 1990s. Quickly, she splits up with her girlfriend and is soon sleeping with her trainer, Jim. With so much covered in such a short amount of time, the viewer may wonder what’s left to tell. Plenty, it turns out.
Despite once being promoted by legendary Don King, Christy’s story will be unfamiliar to many. Often touted as the fighter who put women’s boxing on the map, the West Virginian’s career is captured well in Michôd’s energetic movie, featuring some electric bouts in the ring. Christy may follow the traditional sport narrative, but the boxer’s life is filled with drama, and some of it is difficult to watch.
Sydney Sweeney’s last film, Echo Valley, was a disaster, but here in the eponymous role, she is spectacular in portraying a young woman struggling to find her way in a man’s world. Could an Oscar nomination beckon? After all, the Academy Awards love a boxing film, and Hilary Swank, who, of course, won Best Actress in 2005 for her role in Million Dollar Baby, even gets a mention in Christy. But Sweeney takes it up a notch and really embodies the feisty but vulnerable Christy. Her gleeful smiles when she knocks out yet another opponent are worth the ticket price alone.
Playing her feckless, controlling husband is Ben Foster, and he, too, is excellent, sinister and useless in equal measures. Jim is ruined by the lure of money, best seen in his gaudy Versace shirts later on in the film when Christy’s fame is on the rise. However, he’s also jealous of her career, afraid that she will go too far away from him. He’s already abused his position by sleeping with her in the first place, and his marriage proposal is only made because he thinks she’s getting back with her girlfriend. Foster never overplays his villainy.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about Merritt Wever, who plays Christy’s mother, Joyce. Wever piles on the Southern accent, with all its grace and airs. But underneath its hospitality is a nastiness that sometimes seems too brutal to be true. Worried about what the neighbours will think, Joyce initially puts an end to her daughter’s lesbian affair and threatens priests and therapists if Christy continues with her relationship. Naturally, she’s delighted when Christy brings Jim home with her for a visit, and she doesn’t bat an eyelid about the age difference between boxer and trainer.
Joyce may have behaved like this in real life, but there’s no humanity in Wever’s portrayal, and unforgiving till the conclusion, she ends up as the true monster of the film. We see little of Christy’s brother, and we’re told about her father’s collusion with Jim, rather than shown it, which again puts all the blame on the mother.
But these issues can’t distract from the vibrancy of the biopic and the epic, vicious fight scenes, one daringly soundtracked to classical music by Arvo Pärt: it works a treat. The comedy comes from Chad Coleman, playing the effervescent Don King. He gets the best lines. And Katy O’Brian, previously in the queer weightlifting film, Loves Lies Bleeding, gives a compelling turn as boxer Lisa Holewyne.
Not just a boxing film, Christy also has similarities with gangster movies such as Goodfellas as Christy and Jim, resplendent in their new clothes, make money and turn to drugs. It all builds to something so shocking that it’s like being in the boxing ring itself.
Christy is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8-19 October.
