{"id":734433,"date":"2025-11-06T14:44:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T22:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?p=734433"},"modified":"2025-11-06T14:44:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T22:44:46","slug":"movie-review-a-fierce-sydney-sweeney-pulls-no-punches-in-harrowing-boxing-biopic-christy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/entertainment\/movie-review-a-fierce-sydney-sweeney-pulls-no-punches-in-harrowing-boxing-biopic-christy\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review: A fierce Sydney Sweeney pulls no punches in harrowing boxing biopic \u2018Christy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By JOCELYN NOVECK
Updated 11:13 AM PST, November 6, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This
Image released by Black Bear shows Sydney Sweeney in a scene from \u201cChristy.\u201d (Eddy Chen\/Black Bear via AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At one point deep into \u201cChristy,\u201d the boxer Christy Martin, played with ferocious commitment by Sydney Sweeney, describes how she feels being in the ring. It\u2019s not what you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s where she finds quiet, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a line at the beginning of this two-hour plus film would have been laughable, given that the ring is obviously hectic, loud, bloody \u2014 and terrifying, to most of the world. But when Martin says it, we get it. The ring is where Christy can be in control. Outside \u2014 and especially at home, in the bedroom \u2014 is where life gets truly scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChristy,\u201d directed by David Mich\u00f4d, begins as a solid sports biopic, the based-on-true-events story of Martin, a hot-tempered teen from coal-mining country who fell into boxing and became a trailblazer for women in the sport. That\u2019s the triumph part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then comes the tragedy: the horrific abuse that she suffered at the hands of her trainer and husband, Jim Martin. And that\u2019s of course where the boxing montages stop. In its final act, \u201cChristy\u201d goes darker than anything we\u2019re prepared for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mashup of genres may feel a bit tonally rough, but it ultimately works, not least because of its unifying factor: Sweeney, who imbues her no-holds-barred portrayal of Martin with both sweetness and rage, with brio and real vulnerability. The actor\u2019s background in MMA fighting was clearly essential for the role, for which she bulked up considerably (a la De Niro in \u201cRaging Bull\u201d) and trained extensively. (She also donned a brown mullet wig and wore brown contact lenses, further distancing herself visually from Sydney Sweeney the movie star.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We begin in 1989 in small-town West Virginia, where Martin lives with her parents, a loving but weak father (Ethan Embry) and an obtuse and intolerant mother (Merritt Wever). This is not the environment in which a gay teenager can hope to thrive or even survive. Fearing her inclinations, they threaten to send her to a priest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is why, when Christy gets the chance to make $500 in a boxing match thanks to a local promoter, she grabs it. At the gym, she meets a trainer, Jim (Ben Foster, a bumbling and eventually chilling villain in an ugly combover). He has no interest at first, and sends a man to spar with her and \u201cbreak a rib if you have to.\u201d She cleans the guy\u2019s clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon Christy\u2019s living away from home in a cheap apartment, training full time. \u201cI think I\u2019ve found my thing,\u201d she says. Unfortunately, being trained by Jim also means having to submit to him in other ways. She goes home, but he lures her back with promises of better fights in Florida, life near the beach, and a meeting with super-promoter Don King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, Christy doesn\u2019t get the beach but she does get \u2026 a husband. Jim, increasingly jealous and paranoid, makes a highly unpleasant marriage proposal. Christy obviously feels she has no choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, she gets her meeting with King. The promoter likes her pluck, and offers her a contract. \u201cCoal miner\u2019s daughter,\u201d he says approvingly (Chad L. Coleman, bringing humor to the role). He also likes that she wears pink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At her first big fight for King, the pressure is enormous (director Mich\u00f4d is especially good at depicting the incredibly tense atmosphere around the ring, lending the proceedings an authenticity that some boxing movies don\u2019t attain.) But when a nervous Christy gets into the ring in her pink robe, her skills and her bravado carry the day. Blood may be running down her nose and splattering across her white tank top, but she\u2019s grinning joyously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon the couple is in a much nicer house, being interviewed by the media. \u201cI\u2019m just a regular housewife who knocks people out for a living,\u201d she tells a journalist. She cooks, she cleans and she fights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the movie shifts \u2014 to a gut-wrenching drama of domestic abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you know the story of Christy Martin, you\u2019ll know she barely escaped her marriage alive. In any case, the film in its last moments is so harrowing, you wouldn\u2019t believe it actually happened \u2014 if it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she did survive, incredibly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Lady is a Champ,\u201d blared the cover of Sports Illustrated when it put Martin on its cover in 1996, the first female boxer to occupy that hallowed space. Emerging from \u201cChristy,\u201d we understand that what made her a champ had more to do with her ultimate resilience outside the ring than with her jabs and hooks inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChristy,\u201d a Black Bear release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association \u201cfor language, violence\/bloody images, some drug use and sexual material.\u201d Running time: 135 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOCELYN NOVECK
Noveck is an Associated Press national writer specializing in culture and gender, and a film critic.<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At one point deep into \u201cChristy,\u201d the boxer Christy Martin, played with ferocious commitment by Sydney Sweeney, describes how she feels being in the ring. It\u2019s not what you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":734436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[279813,284772,59673,284769,279822,279819,284766,279825,23290,284763,6346,433,279834,284775,141861,5077,373,60421,82515,147],"class_list":["post-734433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ben-foster","tag-black-bear","tag-boxing","tag-chad-l-coleman","tag-christy","tag-christy-martin","tag-david-michod-2","tag-don-king","tag-entertainment","tag-ethan-embry","tag-film","tag-florida","tag-jim-martin","tag-merritt-wever","tag-motion-picture-association","tag-movie","tag-sports","tag-sports-illustrated","tag-sydney-sweeney","tag-west-virginia"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/christy.webp","author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/author\/admin\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734439,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734433\/revisions\/734439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}