15 Years Ago Today: One Of The Best Martial Arts Movies Ever Made Flopped In Theaters

The original 1976 "Rocky" has transcended merely being a great movie to become the pop cultural blueprint for "boxing movie." Any movie trying to surpass "Rocky," its own sequels included, is as foolish as a novice fighter trying to knock out a heavyweight champion. But if one fighting movie recaptures the human spirit in "Rocky," it's Gavin O'Connor's 2011 "Warrior." 

While "Warrior" is about pairs of men fighting in caged rings, it actually focuses on a different sport: mixed martial arts (MMA), which is more acrobatic with the grappling of wrestling. O'Connor and his actors bring the full-throated intensity of the sport to the screen, but the characters carry extra weight into the ring.

The leads of "Warrior" are two brothers — Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), both trained by their father, Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) as fighters. The brothers have been estranged since childhood, when Brendan didn't leave with Tommy and their mother to escape Paddy's alcoholism. Tommy, returning home a disillusioned Marine, goes to his dad for help training for an upcoming tournament, Sparta. Brendan, now a high school teacher facing foreclosure, returns to MMA and finds himself entering that same tournament as a long shot.

Upon its September 9, 2011 wide release in theaters, "Warrior" underperformed at the box office, grossing under $14 million domestic and $23 million worldwide, against a $25 million budget. Contemporary reviews note the premise and marketing campaign didn't help set the movie apart from any generic fighting movie, so it's not hard to imagine why audiences passed on something they thought they'd seen before.

But "Warrior" has found its audience since. In 2021, Gavin O'Connor even spoke with /Film for the film's tenth anniversary, with it rightfully placed in the sports movie hall of fame.

The arc of "Warrior" is Tommy and Brendan mending their shared estrangement by hitting each other head-on. Yet they don't shoulder the emotional weight of "Warrior" alone. Nick Nolte as Paddy sits next to Hardy as the film's standout performance, and "Warrior" does itself a favor pairing the two together for the film's duration. 

There's no flashbacks to the Conlon brothers' childhood, so we can only take the film's word for it that Paddy was an abusive drunk. But casting Nolte paints a convincing picture (especially if you've ever seen his performance as an abusive dad in "Hulk.") In the present, any trace of that old monster is gone. Paddy, 1000 days sober when "Warrior" begins, wants to reconcile with two sons that both want him out of their lives; though in fairness to Paddy, Tommy recruiting him as his trainer definitely sends mixed signals. Nolte's performance is often heartbreaking, showing earnestness and regret sometimes aren't enough to fix the past. Paddy is shown listening to audiobook tapes of "Moby-Dick" during the film, suggesting his quest might be futile as Ahab's vengeance was.

Gavin O'Connor wrote the part of Paddy specifically for Nolte (Nolte was originally cast in O'Connor's previous film, "Pride and Glory," but had to drop out). Speaking to USA Today in 2011, Nolte — who has a real history of alcoholism — said he and O'Connor decided to explore those real issues through the character. "Acting can be cathartic," Nolte said. O'Connor added that he wanted "Warrior" to be a showcase reminding people of what a great actor Nolte is. Nolte earned his third nomination for Best Supporting Actor for "Warrior" (though he lost to Christopher Plummer for Mike Mills' "Beginners"), so the plan worked.

Joel Edgerton admittedly gets the least complicated character to play. Brendan is the underdog family man, so inevitably his troubled bad boy brother (with Tom Hardy's offbeat but magnetic charm) outshines him. Brendan's domestic life, such as wife Tess' (Jennifer Morrison) turn from disapproval to being there to cheer him on in the finals, is also "Warrior" at its most rote (and genre-mandated). But at the same time, those qualities make it hard not to like Brendan. The threat he faces of losing his home taps in the right kind of economic anxiety for resonant storytelling.

In his 2021 interview with /Film, Gavin O'Connor discussed the movie's structure of two intertwined protagonists with mutually exclusive goals. (Only one of the brothers can win Sparta.) O'Connor said:

"The conceit right out of the gate was, how do I get the audience to invest in both [Tommy and Brendan]? How do I get them to have deep feelings about both of them, and not only their trauma, but also the stakes of their lives? The fight outside of the cage? If I can hook them into that, I'm going to challenge them to, Now what? When they face each other in the showdown, now who are you rooting for?"

O'Connor noted in that same interview that MMA offers a "whole different approach to choreography" — MMA involves fighting with the whole body, not just punching. Edgerton and Hardy trained hard to be convincing MMA fighters, and the effort shows onscreen in their physicalities. Note, too, that the movie ends as soon as the Conlon brothers' match does. Them fighting each other, letting all their rage out, isn't an obstacle to reconciliation, it's the path towards it.