Christy (2025)

★★★★
I looked up Christy Martin's fight record after I finished watching the biopic Christy and was amazed by her win-loss totals. I then watched her 1996 match against Irish boxer Deirdre Gogarty, which took place on the undercard for the Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno main event. It was an astonishing display of athleticism and a technical masterpiece. Writers Mirrah Foulkes and David Michôd and director Michôd bring Christy Martin's turbulent life to the big screen to chronicle her beginnings in amateur boxing competitions to the professional stage in Las Vegas and beyond. It was a life of triumph and shocking lows that almost came to a tragic end. It's a remarkable story on its own, but to see Sydney Sweeney embody the role so effectively as Christy is to see an actress take a big leap forward to challenge herself and convey all the pain and tragedy of that story into a gripping narrative.

Christy grew up in a small West Virginia village and played college basketball, but she was suspended from the team due to an on-court incident (per the movie; I haven't read her memoir). On the side, she has been participating in small boxing matches for a few hundred dollars a fight. A promoter notices her and offers her an opportunity to train professionally in Tennessee. Her new trainer, James Martin (Ben Foster), mocks her at first, given that this is the late '80s when female boxers were not taken seriously. However, when she steps into the ring to spar and displays her talent, he reconsiders. In due course, her profile rises, and she competes in larger venues. During the next several years, she will relocate to Florida for more competition and become engaged to trainer James, who thus far has sent numerous warning signs that he is not a great guy and in fact will figure into some of Christy's darkest moments.

Boxing promotor Don King (Chad L. Coleman) takes notice and signs her as the first woman boxer in his organization and dubs her "The Coalminer's Daughter." Even during this scene with one of boxing's most high-profile figures, Christy continues to endure challenges due to her sex. Hilariously, James gets a reality check when Don King says with authority that they have never met despite's James's assertion that they have. One of the ways James became such a major part of her camp was that he claimed to know Don King and could get him on the phone anytime he wanted. The cracks begin to show. Steering her into marrying him was also part of his agenda, as he saw her as his ticket to a wealthier lifestyle. She also faced pressure from him because she is a lesbian, and the marriage was based on his warnings that she would not be a successful boxer if she were open about it.

The movie makes an interesting time jump in the career of Christy Martin (née Salters). There is a build up to her big match on the 1996 undercard of Holyfield-Tyson, but then we find ourselves in 2003 when she no longer fights at the M.G.M. Grand in Las Vegas. Fight opportunities are drying up. James Martin got her addicted to cocaine and makes promises of fights that don't come to pass. His control over her is increasing along with his paranoia. She finally has had enough, and in late 2010, the tension simmering under the surface comes to full boil. This brutal sequence is perfect in every way. The soundtrack is ominous. Ben Foster and Sydney Sweeney completely lose themselves in their roles. Foster as James becomes a quiet yet calculating monster, while Sweeney gives the performance of her career thus far by capturing the pain and fear that Christy must have felt that night.

Christy is a powerful drama about Christy Martin's ordeal with her husband, but it is also a highly effective sports movie. We have the training scenes and boxing scenes, which are staged masterfully with all the blood and sweat of the real thing, but there is also psychological warfare. At James's urging we suspect, Christy demeans and insults her opponents and showboats for the crowd to increase her notoriety. Notoriety means more money, so he had something to gain by her theatrics. The combination of getting into fighters' heads and the ability to back it all up with victories makes for a complex character who fights not just for herself but for an entire division that was waiting for someone of her stature to put it on the map. The physical punishment she endured in the ring, though, came second to the abuse she felt at home. This one-two punch positions Christy as Sydney Sweeney's best film to date.

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