Christy movie: Sydney Sweeney boxing biopic is a movie you want to admire, rather than one you like

The problem with talking about how much an actor worked to physically “transform” themselves for a role, the more you’re aware of it, the more you become distracted by it.

That’s the case for Sydney Sweeney, a screen star who has been perceived by some as a modern-day blonde bombshell defined in the public consciousness by her sexual appeal.

To portray a real-life boxer, Sweeney had to dramatically downplay her famed physical attractiveness – she gained 15kg, wore brown contacts and a series of really awful mullet wigs – and trained for months to convincingly look like a fighter, adopt a West Virginian accent and suffer more than one concussion.

All that work, which the promotion for the film really played up. Which is understandable, of course. If you put in the hard yards for your art, you get to talk about it, even if it didn’t get people to actually see the movie. Christy was famously a box office bomb when it opened in the US last year, coming in at 11th on its opening weekend despite being put in 2000 cinemas.

Drawing attention to all of Sweeney’s work also had the opposite effect creatively – instead of disappearing into a role onscreen, the experience for the audience is now all about the effort of the performance, rather than watching a character in their story.

Who’s the main character now? In Christy, it’s Sydney Sweeney, not Christy Martin, the woman whose story the film is actually there to serve.

It’s not that Sweeney isn’t good in the role. There’s a balance of brash ferociousness and concealed vulnerability in her performance.

But still a distance to it in part because the performance is so studied. You end up seeing the complexity of the character, rather than feel it. It’s intellectual, not emotional. Effective not affecting.

Martin was the US’s first female boxing star, rising in the 1990s at a time when there was barely a league for women fighters. She is eventually signed by Don King and her stature rises.

Christy is abrasive in public, goading her rivals and pumping up her talent, which is par for the course for fighters – and that’s what boxing aficionados want, but plays obnoxiously to those not enamoured of a sport where people are violently hurt.

If you’re not already a boxing fan, Christy is not going to turn you into one.

The more compelling story is outside the ring, in Martin’s relationship to her trainer and eventual husband, James (a leery Ben Foster). He was twice her age when they married, and she was suppressing her queerness thanks to the judgment of her rural community and her even more awful mother (Merritt Wever).

James is controlling of Christy across all aspects of her life, and there are (now) obvious signs of emotional, financial and professional abuse.

The film wants to explore how someone who presents as so fierce publicly can be cowered in her own home by someone physically weaker than her.

Domestic violence and coercive control are newer territory for a sports movie, but it’s not for a biopic, and Christy play it safe with all the expected story and character beats of what you think this movie is going to be. It never surprises you.

As this point, the story of a determined and underestimated underdog who overcomes biases and also personal obstacles ends up becoming a box-ticking exercise, no matter how worthy the subject matter may be.

Christy is directed by Australian filmmaker David Michod (Animal Kingdom) from a screenplay he wrote with partner Mirrah Foulkes.

Foulkes’s 2019 film Judy and Punch starring Mia Wasikowska and Damon Herriman was a much more impactful film about marital abuse and the wilful ignorance or, worse, complicity of the wider community.

In that film, you connect to it, you feel Judy’s experiences. You empathise with her, rather than just coldly sympathise. You see Judy, not Wasikowska, in Christy, all you see is Sweeney and her effortful performance.

Martin may be a fascinating woman in real-life, but you don’t get that measure here. Christy remains a film you want to admire rather than one you like.

Rating: 3/5

Christy is in cinemas on January 8