Fighting Critic Reviews

Fighting has real grit and excellent acting. In other words, there is gold in that dirt.Read the full review

Fighting doesn’t break new ground so much as animate B-movie types, but New York movies this gritty and flavorful don't come along very often.Read the full review

I like the way the personalities are allowed to upstage the plot in Fighting, a routine three-act fight story that creates uncommonly interesting characters.Read the full review

In a genre where too many films are all brawn and no brain, Fighting is a contender.Read the full review

Not everything that happens in Fighting entirely makes sense -- it’s a fable, after all, and a fable doesn't necessarily have to -- but it breathes with a rough, exuberant realism that you rarely see in movies of its kind.Read the full review

It's not "Raging Bull" or "Fight Club," but Fighting is populated by believable losers and lovingly adorned with just the right faces and peeling wallpaper to absorb you in Montiel's world.Read the full review

In Channing Tatum, who also starred in "Saints," the film has a good-looking, magnetic hunk to draw a crowd. Terrence Howard lends the pedigree of great screen acting, and Zulay Henao adds charm and glamour.Read the full review

For all the utter phoniness of Fighting -- the cockeyed, faux-verite shooting, the lurches in storytelling, the lack of character development, a contrived crisis between Shawn and his would-be girlfriend Zulay and Tatum's dopey-charming thing--Fighting's not so bad.Read the full review

Murderously dull stretches of dialogue suck most of the fun out of this sloppy drama.Read the full review