A young woman is given an opportunity to become the first recognized professional female boxer, but she’s emotionally and physically abused along the way. Star Sydney Sweeney is excellent here. But emotional manipulation, sexual abuse, extreme bloody violence and foul language greatly overshadow the expected fisticuffs.
Christy Salters has never been known as a “sure thing.” In any category or setting.
After completing high school, for example, Christy just drifted around. She definitely wasn’t college material. And in everything else, she was either half measure or, kinda, missing in action.
Her love life followed suit.
I mean the only heart spark Christy ever felt was for a school friend named Rosie. And while they flirted around with a couple make out sessions, their blue-collar, West Virginia mining town didn’t look kindly on anything of that sort. In fact, Christy’s mom forbade her to ever see Rosie again once rumors got out. And Rosie’s mom demanded that her daughter go talk to the local priest.
So, life for Christy Salters came down to short, part-time jobs and jumping into other small money-making gigs for a lark. But it was one of those just-for-fun diversions that opened her to a new possibility.
For some crazy reason, Christy decided to enter the local Toughman competition. She ended up stepping into the ring with a hefty girl twice her size. And even though Christy had a total of zero boxing experience, she wailed into her opponent with such ferocity that she won the $300 prize.
Somebody had once told Christy that she fought like she was trying to destroy everyone who ever did her wrong. (That was certainly the case when a girl at school tossed the label of lesbian in her direction.) So, maybe this boxing thing was something she could be good at.
That’s when a boxing promoter who had seen her fight at the Toughman event gave Christy a call.
Next thing you know, Christy finds herself actually training, and fighting, and … winning! In fact, she’s kind of a natural at beating people bloody till they tumble to the canvas. Her assigned trainer, Jim Martin, is a completely insufferable jerk. But he knows a thing or two about boxing. And Christy learns quickly.
Of course, Christy’s mom never raised an idiot. Christy knows there’s no such thing as a female pro boxer in 1988. But who knows what the future might hold? There’s one thing for certain: She sure enjoys hammering people in the face and putting a few hundred bucks in her pocket for the effort.
That ain’t chopped liver.
[Spoilers may be contained in the following sections.]
Christy Salters (who becomes Christy Martin after being talked into marriage by her manipulative trainer) brought female boxers to the world’s attention. The film shows us the painful work that Christy went through to build herself into a strong and capable boxer. Her semi-pro boxing popularity grew until she signed a contract with promoter Don King in 1993, making women’s boxing a nationally appreciated professional sport.
Christy has a good relationship with her brother and father, both seemingly loving individuals. When Christy asks her father for help, he quickly shows up to provide it.
After rumors swirl around about Christy and Rosie’s relationship, Rosie is forced to meet with her priest for counseling.
Christy recounts someone saying Christy fought like “I have demons in me.” And Christy suggests, “maybe, I do.”
Christy and Rosie kiss while lying fully dressed on Christy’s bed. (We see them together a second time, but this time Rosie is simply comforting Christy.) We see Christy and Jim in bed together. It appears that Christy is naked, but she’s fully covered by blankets. They kiss. Women walk around the boxing rings, in between rounds, dressed in bikinis. Christy taunts other female boxers with lesbian slurs.
Jim is a controlling and coercive man. He uses Christy’s sexual attractions to manipulate her by threatening her with exposure. He uses that threat to force her to marry him. “You wanna lose your family, your trainer, your career?” Jim asks. “Or do you wanna marry me?”
When money is tight, he records sexually lewd videos of his wife, selling them without telling her. The camera watches closely as Christy, dressed in underwear, “performs” with a realistic sex toy.
We’re told by the movie’s end that Christy married a fellow female boxer later in life.
As you might expect in a boxing movie, we see many people get punched and battered. The difference between this and other sports films is that Christy exclusively features women on the receiving end of the painful-looking attacks. We see women hit in the face and body, doubling over in pain, bleeding from their brows and noses and falling unconscious to the mat.
Of course, Christy is one of those recipients. When Jim first sets her up with a male sparring partner, he tells the guy to “bust her up.” And the guy delivers some gut punches that double her over. In one slated fight, Christy’s nose is broken and blood splatters all over her white top and her opponent’s gloves. Against one female boxer well above her weight class, Christy is pounded and bloodied. During that fight, Christy repeatedly complains of feeling dizzy and overpowered, but Jim keeps pushing her back into the ring.
Along with all his many other threats and machinations, Jim repeatedly tells Christy that if she leaves him, he’ll kill her. We see him gradually become more physically abusive as time goes by.
Jim takes over sparring duties and punches her to the mat, for instance. He wrestles her into a room where (off-screen) we hear him beat her. He throws her down and begins to choke her. Etc. Jim also forces Christy into perverse wrestling match-like acts with strange men in hotel rooms. We see one such interaction. (It’s implied that Jim did this whenever their income dried up.)
When Christy has finally had enough of Jim’s abuse and threatens to leave, Jim tackles her to the floor. He viciously stabs her repeatedly, ripping open her sides and leg. As Christy struggles to breathe, begging for help, Jim retrieves a pistol and shoots her. (We see her on the ground in several small pools of blood, a large slab of flesh hanging off her leg.) Jim then walks off to shower; Christy struggles up and slowly staggers away in agony.
There are about 25 f-words and five s-words scattered throughout the dialogue, along with a handful of uses each of the words “d–n,” “b–ch,” “h—” and “a–hole.”
Jesus’ name is misused twice, and God’s name is combined with “d–n” once. A crude reference is made to male genitalia.
We see Christy, Jim and others drinking beer on a couple of occasions. Jim gets Christy to snort cocaine to keep her energy high. We see them both consume the drug on two different occasions.
Jim Martin is a very deceitful man who lies, cheats and uses every underhanded weapon in his manipulative arsenal to control Christy and keep her under his thumb. In addition to the domestic and sexual abuse, he repeatedly twists Christy into compliance by threatening to tell her father some foul lie. In one instance, when Christy rejects his control, Jim sends out an offensive picture of her to her family members and friends.
Christy’s dad and brother are both supportive of her. However, they remain woefully unaware of the destructive things happening in Christy’s life, such as the abuse she suffers at the hands of Jim and the damaging nature of the relationship between Christy and her mom.
Christy’s mom, Joyce Salters, is hurtful and, in her own way, almost as manipulative as Jim is. Even when Christy reaches out to her mom for help, Joyce pins all the blame on her daughter and rebuffs help offered to Christy by Rosie and others.
During the course of Christy’s career, several of her boxing associates recognize the negative things happening in her life, and they reach out to offer her help. But Christy generally turns them away. Later, she admits that her greatest regret was “not accepting help when it was first offered.”
Sydney Sweeney has definitely been mixing it up over this past year or two with distinctly different film roles that demonstrate that she’s not just another pretty Hollywood face. And Sweeney’s risk-taking and bruising depiction of real-world, blue-collar fighter Christy Martin—a role that called for intensive fighter prep and 30 extra pounds of beef—certainly shows that the actress can stand and deliver in whatever ring she chooses.
This is a gritty biographical sports pic that, while having some formulaic moments, keeps swinging right up till the credits roll. And that’s especially true if you don’t know the full details of Martin’s history.
Moviegoers should be aware that Christy is going to hit them with quite a few cinematic body blows. Christy Martin’s story is full of bloody battering, emotional manipulation, sexual cruelty and domestic abuse. The woman is forced to make lewd videos, bullied for her sexuality (she is gay) and abandoned by her own mother when she asks for help.
All of that adds up to a heavy-hitting film that’s coated with an ever-present petroleum glob of profanity. For many, that will be more than enough to count this film out.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
