I thought this was a pretty solid film. Maybe it wasn't spectacular, but it was really entertaining and engaging. I didn't think there was anything stand out-ish about the camera work, but I did really like the sets and costumes a lot and I will definitely watch it again. David O. Russell did a good job over all.
      I've heard a lot of people saying that they felt it was slow, but I thought the pacing was fine. I just felt like it lacked high enough stakes...the climax wasn't climatic enough. As we could have guessed, this important part of the film is centered around one last big match between Micky (Markii Mark) and a big steroid-y, intimidating other boxer dude who he probably should have lost to, but doesn't. If he had lost the title he was just going to go back to "regular life", and he had already quit boxing and gone back to "regular life" one other time in the film and just hung out with Amy Adams' character Charlene.
     It's garnering some Oscar buzz because of Christian Bale's performance and in my opinion, he's the front runner so far. It was so nice to see Bale in such a high-energy roll. I think of him in movies like The Prestige or 3:10 to Yuma....he did great in those films but this time he was different. He had a lot of spunk and portrayed a very solid role that mirrored the actual real life person's personality very well. He had to lose a lot of weight to play Dicky as a crack addict...his transformation was very impressive. As far as other characters go, I thought that the inclusion of the tacky white trash sisters of Dicky and Micky were hilarious. Melissa Deo played the Eklund matriarch and she did an awesome job. Very nice comedic relief throughout the film. Amy Adams played Micky's love interest. She had to curse a lot and wear skimpy clothes throughout the film and it just didn't feel right. She did a good job, I don't think the problem was with her acting but I do feel like she's just been so
type cast as the sweet, innocent girl in most films she's been in that it was hard for me to feel that this character was real. I think that's unfortunate because I like Amy Adams a lot and I love that she's trying to step out of her box a little bit, I just think she may have done it a little too late in her career. Of course our leading man was Markii Mark Walberg and I thought he did an ok job. His character was very calm and reserved, so he had to be very calm and reserved. I feel that although he was portraying a role different than his norm, I love his norm and wanted to see more energy from him. I also thought he was too old for the role. His character was supposed to be 31 but he looks more like 45...or as my coworker Nicole put it...."FORTY FINE." You can't really argue with that...