Christian Bale’s manic, hopped-up performance as real-life retired boxer-turned-crack addict Dicky “Pride of Lowell” Eklund in The Fighter compensates for a decidedly conventional script and uncharacteristically straight execution from director David O. Russell. The off-kilter, discomforting energy of his earlier films like Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings is largely absent, replaced instead by cushy sports underdog tropes complete with textbook training montage sequences set to grunty rock and an irresistibly fist-pumpin’ finale. While Bale goes the extra mile to match Eklund tic-for-tic, and it’s an impressive, actorly feat that powers much of the film, it’s not as surprising as Mark Wahlberg’s effectively low-key turn as Micky Ward, Dicky’s younger half-brother who’s got his eyes set on the welterweight title. Steeped in the grubby white trash milieu of Lowell, Massachusetts, the rest of the film lurches about in fits of dysfunctional family melodrama, with several supporting characters bordering on caricature that undermine its pretensions to gritty realism.