Christy

EXCLUSIVE: David Michôd is the director of the new film, Christy, which is coming to cinemas on November 28

David Michôd is the creative force behind the upcoming film, Christy, featuring Sydney Sweeney, which arrives in cinemas on November 28 following its domestic box office debut.

The acclaimed Animal Kingdom director has brought to life the extraordinary true story of Christy Martin, a West Virginia native played by Sweeney who emerged as one of boxing’s most pioneering and divisive personalities.

“More than anything I loved the idea of making a movie about a woman with a really ferocious personality,” he told Reach titles.

“I just immediately got a sense that there was something about her that is very charismatic that I really liked, then met her and liked her even more – how beautifully vulnerable and kind and funny she is.”

The director revealed some of his all-time favourite films, including an “unbelievably overlooked masterpiece”.

Apocalypse Now

The epic psychological war drama from 1979 draws loose inspiration from Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness.

The picture charts the journey of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), tasked with a covert assignment to eliminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a rogue Special Forces commander suspected of murder.

David said: “My favourite movie is Apocalypse Now. That movie made me want to make movies.

“I already loved movies but it was Apocalypse Now that made me want to make them. There was something about the giant, crazy adventure of that film.

“I just think it’s amazing. I was talking to someone about it who was reminding me of the fact it wasn’t universally well-reviewed when it was released, which seems insane to me.”

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

David simply stated: “I just think, unbelievably overlooked masterpiece.”

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a grand Western film from 2007.

Based on Ron Hansen’s 1983 novel of the same name, it features Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck.

The film explores the relationship between Jesse James and Robert Ford, focusing on the events that led up to the notorious killing.

Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a 1976 psychological thriller set in New York City post the Vietnam War.

The film stars Robert De Niro as veteran Marine and taxi driver Travis Bickle, whose mental state deteriorates as he works nights in the city.

David commented: “Taxi Driver is right up there for me, just so raw and visceral.

“But again, a movie about a character who does monstrous things, but whose vulnerability and brokenness are so right there on the surface.

“I remember when I was writing Animal Kingdom, I showed the script to people, and some of those people would say ‘Your central character isn’t likeable enough’.

“And I’d go ‘Have you seen Taxi Driver? That guy is kind of grotesque but you can feel him and that’s all you need to be able to do.”

Christy will be hitting cinemas in the UK and Ireland on November 28.

Ruby Rose has entered the ring to take a swing at Sydney Sweeney — blaming the actor, now known for her choice in jeans, for “Christy’s” disastrous debut.

“The original Christy Martin script was incredible. Life changing,” the former “Batwoman” star wrote in a Monday post on Threads. “I was attached to play Cherry. Everyone had experience with the core material. Most of us were actually gay. It’s part of why I stayed in acting.”

“Christy” stars Sweeney as Christy Martin, the groundbreaking boxer who raised the profile of her sport during her Hall of Fame career. The movie follows Martin as a closeted lesbian boxer trying to navigate her professional ascent, an abusive marriage to her toxic coach and her identity. It made just $1.3 million at the domestic box office during its opening weekend.

In her Threads post, Rose mentions “losing roles happens all the time” in Hollywood, but doesn’t hold back from expressing her disapproval that Sweeney is the one portraying Martin.

“Christy deserved better,” Rose said. “None of ‘the people’ want to see someone who hates them, parading around pretending to be us. You’re a cretin and you ruined the film. Period.”

Her comments appear to be in response to Sweeney’s Monday Instagram post in which she shared how “deeply proud” she was of “Christy” despite it flopping at the box office.

“[W]e don’t always just make art for numbers, we make it for impact,” Sweeney wrote in the caption accompanying a gallery led by an image of her bloodied but smiling. “[A]nd christy has been the most impactful project of my life. thank you christy. i love you.”

Attitudes regarding the “Euphoria” actor have been increasingly divided since her part in a controversial American Eagle ad campaign around her “good jeans.” Since then, it has been reported that Sweeney registered to vote as a Republican in Florida shortly before the 2024 presidential election and prominent right-wing figures including President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have voiced their support for the actor.

Sweeney, for her part, has avoided discussing her political beliefs. In the lead-up to “Christy’s” release, she told LGBTQ+ news site PinkNews that she was “excited” for the queer community to see the movie because “she is an unbelievable advocate for the community and I believe this is a beautiful story to tell.”

If you see “Christy,” you’ll remember Christy the person, not “Christy” the movie. This biopic of West Virginia’s other famous coal miner’s daughter Christy Martin, the first female boxer to make the cover of Sports Illustrated, is an efficiently inspiring and harrowing one when the physically transformed, emotionally present Sydney Sweeney is holding the screen as Martin. But otherwise, under David Michôd’s direction, it’s one more machine-pressed product that may as well have been chatbot-prompted into existence.

That’s a shame because early on, when butch, athletic, semi-openly gay Christy is just a picked-on high schooler punching her way into feeling good about herself, you can detect a keen level of attention, especially in the script by Mirrah Foulkes and Michôd, to what’s unspoken in these types of tales: the violence and verve that can mark a boxing talent and the pressure to conform in a male-dominated sport. In this case, it leads Christy to deny a part of her identity.

It’s a very specific tension that has made movies about female boxers in the 21st century — from “Girlfight” and “Million Dollar Baby” through last year’s “The Fire Inside” — so much more interesting as empowerment case studies than the male-centered ones, which still seem rooted in conventional mythmaking. (We’re still living in the Rocky Balboa Universe.)

As memorably conveyed with twang, sweat and tenacity by Sweeney, the young Christy is a natural competitor whose fists give her an out from the judgmental eyes of small-town life, most notably those of her mom (an effectively chilly Merritt Wever). She fights as if she’s been attacked, but can make winning in the ring look both spirited and a foregone conclusion.

That energy and commitment to turn boxing into a career gets an opportunistic fine-tuning — a feminizing pink kit — when she’s hooked up with trainer Jim Martin, played by an eerily dead-eyed Ben Foster as the ghoul-in-waiting he turned out to be. Foster’s Jim, believably disturbed and shady but a bit on the nose, isn’t the movie’s first problem. That would be Michôd’s addiction to montage-ifying every significant dramatic turning point, slathering on the music to keep the timeline moving.

But the famously chameleonic Foster’s portrayal is the film’s most curious dilemma, because it doesn’t allow us to see why Christy would trust her future to his judgment, much less marry him. It’s as if “Christy,” looking backward through a bloody yet unbowed lens, is afraid of presenting Jim Martin as anything but a shifty sleazebag, when what that does is undercut Sweeney’s more delicate job of convincing us why she’d stay with him for decades.

Sweeney manages it anyway, because, despite what you may have assumed, she’s a sturdy in-the-moment actor, especially with her eyes. Still, the movie’s lack of nuance about how toxic relationships develop makes this central twosome a head-scratchingly imbalanced one. Everyone invariably falls into two camps: unfailingly supportive (a sensitive dad played by Ethan Embry; Katy O’Brian as a former rival) or, whenever Wever reappears, jaw-dropping callousness. Much more galvanizing as a combo platter of high-wattage persuasion and dominance is Chad L. Coleman in his handful of scenes as Don King.

The central problem with “Christy” — which needs to be both uplifting about its star subject’s achievement and complex about her journey of sexuality and trauma — is that it screams for a treatment grittier than the slick melodrama we’ve been given. It’s all highlights and lowlights, rarely interested in the in-between stuff that makes watching all the rounds of a bout so necessary to appreciating what it means to survive on the canvas.