Warrior
The 2011 mixed martial arts movie Warrior starts with the main protagonist, Tommy, returning to Pittsburgh to visit his father, whom he has not seen in 14 years. His father, Paddy Conlon, arrives home from church that evening and is surprised to find Tommy waiting at his door with a bottle of what he thinks is still his favourite drink.
However, Paddy is no longer the alcoholic who forced Tommy and his mother to leave home to get away from his domestic abuse.
Who is Tommy?
Tommy is the younger son of Paddy Conlon, who left his family behind to run away with his mother from his alcoholic and abusive father. He later joins the military but quits after he loses his best friend in battle, and that is when he returns to Pittsburgh to visit his father.
Tommy is an angry man full of bitterness, but we later learn from a soldier whom he once saved when they were drowning inside a tank that he is a war hero.
Tommy is full of anger towards his father for all he did to the family while they were younger and even more furious now that he claims to have stopped drinking and turned a new leaf. Paddy invites his son into the house and offers him a cup of coffee, which Tommy refuses, choosing to stick to the alcohol in his pocket.
Why did Tommy get back in the MMA ring?
After returning to Pittsburg, Tommy enters a gym where MMA fighters train and decide to sign up on a whim. While quietly exercising in a corner, he observes the gym’s top MMA fighter, Mad Dog, mercilessly beating up his sparring partners until no one is left to spar with.
Mad Dog’s coach asks the gym receptionists to hire more sparring partners, but no one is available, making Tommy offer to spar with him. The coach dismissed Tommy, thinking he was a nobody, but when backed into a corner, he had no choice but to oblige. Once in the ring, Tommy quickly knocks out Mad Dog with just a few blows, which baffles everyone in the gym.
After he leaves, the coach tries to go after Tommy, but he refuses to let him become his trainer. However, a clip of him knocking out Mad Dog is posted online, and he becomes a sensation. As a result, the coach signs him up for the Sparta competition, but he still refuses to train with him.
Even though Tommy decides to enter the contest on a whim, the other reason is that he wants to help his friend’s widow by donating the money he might win.
Who is Brendan Conlon?
Brendan is the first-born son of Paddy Conlon, who had to grow up under his brother’s shadow since he was always an underdog in the MMA fighting competition in comparison to his younger brother, who was a front liner.
Therefore, when his mother and brother decide to leave their alcoholic father, Brendan chooses to stay behind, hoping to get his father’s attention, and when that does not happen, he becomes estranged from his father and younger brother.
Another reason Brendan stayed behind is his girlfriend Tess, whom he later married, and they have two daughters together. Due to an injury in the ring that rendered Brendan unconscious, he quit fighting and became a high school physics teacher.
Why did Brendan go back to MMA fights?
Brendan’s family is going through a financial crisis since they mortgaged their house for a loan to cover medical bills for their youngest daughter, who suffers from a heart condition. The bank is pushing Brendan for failure to make payments, and they are up for foreclosure and will lose the house if things do not turn around.
Brendan enters fight matches in underground rings behind his wife’s back to earn more, but he eventually opens up about it to Tess before getting suspended from school.
After Brendan is suspended from school, he discusses the possibility of entering the underground fight matches with Tess, and she agrees since he convinces her that he will only be going up against wannabe fighters.
Regardless, Tess wants them to inform their children, but Brendan thinks it is unnecessary, and he suggests leaving the house as usual every morning, but instead of going to school, he goes to the gym. Tess agrees, and he approaches his old friend Frank, who owns a gym that trains MMA fighters.
Frank was Brendan’s trainer when he was injured and taken to the hospital unconscious. As a result, Frank was not enthusiastic about letting Brendan train with him unless he assured him that Tess is aware and okay with it. Eventually, he agrees, and Brendan joins his team.
Brendan’s training improves tremendously within a short period, and he soon surpasses the gym’s top athlete, Frank, who is training for the upcoming Sparta competition. However, Brendan still only participates in the underground fights, where he now dominates with back-to-back winning streaks.
One day, when the group was training in their usual run up the hills, Frank’s top fighter got into an accident and had to be rushed to the hospital. While leaving the hospital, Brendan floats across the idea that he could replace the fighter in the Sparta ring and represent Frank’s gym.
At first, Frank is absolutely against it but still agrees to talk to the Sparta team about allowing him to change the fighter he had signed up for. Brendan does not discuss the decision with his wife, and when the call comes saying the organizers agreed to let him join, Tess is unhappy and vows not to watch his fights in the Sparta competition.
What happens during the Sparta MMA competition?
The estranged brothers first lay eyes on each other on the first day during the press conference at Atlantic City. However, Tommy walks away from his brother without a second thought. They run into each other at the beach later that night when Tommy goes out for a walk after he sees Mark on television talking about how he saved him and that he is a war hero.
While Brendan tries to reconcile and have a sit-down, Tommy is still very bitter and not ready to give a chance; he cares about neither Tess nor his nieces. He blatantly tells Brendan that he is not his brother because his brother would have been in the car when he left with their mother and would have been around to care for them and him.
When the Sparta competition starts, Tommy is the mysterious war hero whom people know nothing about, while Brendan is the underdog physics teacher. The two brothers are two opposites in the ring, with Tommy being the hot head who only thinks about furiously knocking out their opponents quickly, while Brendan is the methodological fighter who takes his opponents on a battle of resilience until they tap out.
In his first fight, Tommy knocks out his opponent with one punch, and sure that he will not wake up, he storms out of the cage. On the other hand, Brendan is overwhelmed in the first two rounds of the match but sticks through, taking on the punches until he gets his chance to retaliate. Then, he makes his opponents tap out.
The brothers advance in their respective matches down to the top four, where Tommy faces Mad Dog, and Brendan faces the famous MMA fighter, Koba.
Does Mad Dog get his revenge?
After the clip about him getting beat up by Tommy at the gym, Mad Dog is humiliated on the internet, and he vows to eliminate Tommy during the Sparta competition. However, one in the ring, Mad Dog, does not even get a chance to throw a single punch since he is knocked out as soon as the referee says, “Fight.”
Who wins the fight?
Everyone is convinced that Kobe will humiliate Brendan during the fight, with the commentators calling him a fish that has wandered too far from his comfort zone and is soon to be mauled by the MMA shark, Koba.
As expected, Koba dominates the first rounds, pushing Brendan to his limits, but with his incredible endurance, Brendan never taps out. He changes the game, starts fighting back following his coach’s instructions, and eventually makes Koba tap out, winning the fight. His wife, Tess, is in the audience cheering him.
What happens in the final showdown?
Before the final match begins, the audience discovers that the final contestants, Brendan and Tommy, are brothers. Tommy starts strong, dominating the first two rounds like in all his other fights. He goes at his brother with 14 years of pent-up anger and rage, raining blow after blow on him.
In the third round, Brendan starts to fight back, and he dislocates Tommy’s shoulder when he refuses to tap out. Despite having only one working arm, Tommy refuses to give in and insists on fighting, and that is when the fight starts to get emotional.
Brendan is conflicted about continuing the fight and pleads with Tommy to stop since he will not win. However, he realizes that the only way out is by making Tommy tap out or knock him out. The fight continues for two more rounds, and in the final round, Brendan puts Tommy in a chokehold, but he still refuses to tap out until he hears his brother beg him to give in and apologize for the past.
Brendan assures Tommy that it is okay to tap out and tells him how much he loves him.
Do the brothers reconcile?
The relationship between the brothers and their father is completely broken to the extent that Brendan does not allow the father to see his family. When Paddy visits Brendan to tell him about Tommy returning, Brendan thinks he came to gloat since the father had always dotted over Tommy training him while he never agreed to train with Brendan.
It seems that an incident happened between them, which made Brendan keep his family away from Paddy. Consequently, although Tommy asks his father to train him ahead of the Sparta MMA competition, he clarifies that he has not been allowed to ask anything about his life for the past 14 years, and nothing has changed between them.
When Paddy tries to get closer to Tommy before the semi-final round, Tommy loses it, making it clear that he will never forgive his father, which leads to his father’s relapse in the hotel room. He drinks so much that Tommy had to put him to bed and attend the final matches alone without his trainer.
The father shows up during the final round of the match between Tommy and Brendan, and even though he smiles at his son’s reconciliation, he walks the other way when Brendan and Tommy help each other out of the ring.
What happens at the end of Warrior?
The film ends with Brendan, the new Sparta MMA champion, holding his little brother Tommy as they walk out of the arena with the crowds cheering.
Warrior is a beautiful story about family, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the MMA ring. The film’s last minutes award it the best final, as it is emotional and symbolic.
Tommy is adamant about his ego and unwillingness to make up with his family throughout the movie, and his tapping out is suggestive that he is ready to soften his heart and give his family another chance. There are no favourites in this movie since they both have solid backgrounds, making it impossible to choose one over the other and only hoping that the brothers find a way to improve their relationship.