ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This week the podcast revisits Warrior — the 2011 MMA family drama directed by Gavin O'Connor, starring Tom Hardy as Tommy Riordan, a former US Marine carrying unimaginable grief and a secret that could detonate everything, Joel Edgerton as Brendan Conlon, his estranged older brother and part-time physics teacher fighting desperately to save his daughter's life, and Nick Nolte as Paddy Conlon — their father, 14 months sober, trying to earn back the love of two sons he failed in every way that matters.
The Sparta tournament. 16 fighters. $5 million. Winner takes all. And two brothers on a collision course neither of them can stop.
Before the film discussion gets going, the Scotsman arrives with a story. A proper one. It involves his two boys playing footy, a dirty match, a fence that probably should have stayed between him and the pitch, a club president who had something to say about it, and a two-week ban that the Scotsman accepts with absolutely no regrets whatsoever. We'll say no more. Just listen.
On the film itself, the two land in rare and slightly painful agreement. The ingredients for something genuinely great are all here — fractured family, guilt, grief, addiction, and the impossible question of whether a father can ever truly earn forgiveness from the people he hurt most.
Three performers at or near the very top of their game. And one single scene — Nick Nolte, alone, drunk, utterly broken — that is as honest and as devastating as anything you will find in modern cinema.
And yet, somewhere between the repetitive fight structure, the undercooked character development, the montage that looks like it was assembled in an afternoon, and a finale that ties things up just a little too neatly for a story this complicated, the film never quite becomes what it so clearly wanted to be.
The Scotsman gives it 2.4. The Aussie gives it 1.5 and is completely unapologetic. It may be the lowest combined score in the history of the show.
Rohan Reminisces: 2011 — Game of Thrones premieres, Osama Bin Laden is killed, Steve Jobs dies, Adele takes over the planet and the Aussie attempts to explain planking to a man who still thinks it's yoga
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