Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
Christy - Movie Review by Lisa Blanck
Other than at a film festival, this may be the first time I’ve ever sat through a movie screening with the subject of a biopic. Which made the screening of Christy a unique experience. Sitting in the audience, dressed in her signature pink and surrounded by her effusive family, friends and some local boxers she’s trained, it was definitely a unique screening.
If you’re a boxing fan, or a resident of Apopka, Florida, the name Christy Martin might ring a bell. I remember the story of the courageous woman who survived being stabbed and shot by her husband/trainer. Jim Martin left her for dead, bleeding out on the floor of their bedroom. His insane jealousy and his need to completely control Christy was revealed in court following the near-fatal attack.
Throughout their marriage, Martin repeatedly threatened Christy, “If you leave me, I’ll kill you”. Though we know Christy survived the stabbing, with the help of her neighbor who happened along the road at just the right time, the details that lead up to that night are completely revealed in the film. There are disturbing, uncomfortable scenes of increasing brutality doled out by the fists of her husband, in public and in private. He also has no problem humiliating her for money. He skims money from her purses. After the screening, Christy Martin told the audience that this was the first time she’s been able to sit through the film. In previous screenings, she left right after the opening credits. Martin ‘lived the pain, she did not have to watch it.’
What I also did not know, since I don’t follow boxing, was how challenging it was for Christy, and other women boxers, in the early days of the sport. Not only were professional women boxers a rarity in the 1990’s, there was almost no money in it. Her first purse garnered her a whopping $500, and she was overjoyed with that. At the time, as a young woman from Itmann, WV, she had no idea she could make boxing her life.
But the wins kept on coming. She got noticed by promoters, including Don King, which encouraged Christy to keep pushing the glass ceiling. She loved the feel of being inside the ring, and she was good at punching people. As we’re told by Christy, who is played by Sydney Sweeney in the film, ‘when she’s in the ring, everything is quiet. It’s outside the ring that things get noisy and complicated’.
And those complications are abundant in all her personal relationships. Her family, and especially her mother, Joyce, (Merritt Wever), refused to acknowledge that Christy was gay, refused to accept her long-time girlfriend. There’s also the way her husband Jim (Ben Foster) mistreats her, the way he speaks to her. Outside the ring Christy had few people in her corner; she had difficulty asking for help and was reluctant to defend herself. When he first starts coaching her, Jim tells Christy, “nobody wants to see a butch girl fight”, and encourages her to change her costume, her hairstyle and her sexual preference. If she made herself more feminine, the men would flock to her. However, it’s apparent that what makes her popular in the sport is her skill and her sass, not the cotton candy pink of her clothes.
I had my doubts about the casting of Sweeney in the role. I wasn’t convinced that she could represent the physicality of a boxer. I knew she had the mental stamina for challenging roles, as she showed us in Immaculate, where she survives all manner of torture. Did Sweeney convince me that she was the woman who earned 34 wins, two losses, two draws and was the first ever female boxer to fight in Las Vegas? Did I feel she earned the title of 'first woman boxer on the cover of Sports Illustrated'? Not totally. When Sweeney's Christy was outside the ring I could feel her determination, could see it in her eyes. But inside the ring, the fire was missing. Though the fight scenes were exquisitely well-shot, Sweeney just never seemed to command the canvas. We hear in the film that boxing is '5% aggression, the rest is strategy and control'. I don’t feel that Sweeney captured that important 5%.
