Mark Reviews Movies: BRUISED

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | November 17, 2021

Jackie Justice (Halle Berry) runs. That's just what she does when faced with a challenge, an obstacle, or any kind of setback. That's what Jackie did, as portrayed in the opening scene of Bruised, when her career as a fighter in the mixed martial arts had its first real test.

She had won ten fights in a row with ease, but then, in the first round of what would be her last match in a ring in Las Vegas, her opponent unleashed a pummeling unlike she had ever experienced. Jackie simply got up, climbed over the metal fence surrounding the ring, and ran, never to be seen fighting again.

A decade later, Jackie lives a mostly anonymous life, cleaning the houses of well-to-do people and avoiding the potential for anyone to recognize her. A couple of young men do one night, while she's sitting outside a convenience store. When they recall that beating and her unprecedented escape from the ring, Jackie—you guessed it—runs again.

The movie, written by Michelle Rosenfarb and directed by Berry (in her debut behind the camera), is mixture of a thoughtful character study and a barrage of formula. On the one hand, Jackie and the assorted struggles she faces—in her day-to-day life and within her mind, as details of her past start to emerge—are treated with quiet care and the sense of a woman coming to terms with what life has given her—as well as what she can finally do about that. On the other, the story forces the character into a routine, predictable plot, revolving around Jackie's inevitable return to MMA fighting, and refuses to allow anything about the character, her relationships, or her traumatic past to get in the way of that formula.

It all builds toward and, of course, climaxes with a Big Fight, as Jackie has to prove to herself, her family and the few friends she has, and the entire world that she's still, always was, and can continue to be tough. There's an easy test that sports movies such as this one present for themselves and the audience: One can determine how successful the drama is by how invested one is the Big Match. Here, we're more likely to be distracted by the underwhelming nature of the fight and the particularly grating commentary on the sidelines.

Those elements wouldn't matter—or, at least, wouldn't matter as much—if the movie had done the work of focusing on Jackie, of making her battles outside the ring feel natural and more developed, and of turning the fight itself—not its outcome—into the real victory for the character. Rosenfarb's screenplay comes close to accomplishing those things, but at every moment that the movie could dive into the depths of its drama, the filmmakers pull back.

Jackie gets back into fighting on account of her controlling boyfriend/manager Desi (Adan Canto), who brings her to an underground fight and watches as an infuriated Jackie beats up a much bigger fighter outside the ring. That catches the attention of Immaculate (Shamier Anderson), who runs an MMA league and wants Jackie to start training again.

She does, partly for personal reasons she can only explain with a shrug, but it's mostly because her 11-year-old son Manny (Danny Boyd Jr.) arrives at her house. Jackie's mother Angel (Adriane Lenox) explains that the boy's father, an undercover cop who raised Manny after Jackie bailed on her career and entire life, was killed in action. The boy, silent with the trauma of witnessing his father's violent death, has no one else, and a return to the ring will earn the unexpected mother some money.

The rest of the story switches between Jackie's training and the various, mounting difficulties of her personal life. On the training side, we get the usual montages of exercising in a gym and out in the world, as well as plenty of generic talks about strategy with Jackie's trainer Buddhakan (a no-nonsense but compassionate Shelia Atim, whose performance suggests a lot of untapped mystery and depth to the character). It's all building toward a title brawl with "Lady Killer" (Valentina Shevchenko). While Immaculate praises and hypes his new challenger, a single setback has him railing about Jackie being a wash-up who's only going into the ring for him to meet some contractual obligations. If that seems like a bad business move, it is a chance for yet another person to doubt Jackie—not that it's particularly necessary.

Far more intriguing and involving are the scenes with Jackie at home (multiple homes, as more obstacles and conflict arise). She tries to balance her training with raising a son, to realize how many people have wronged and continue to wrong her (Desi's control turns abusive, and Jackie eventually confronts her mother about the results of Angel's negligent parenting), and to finally take control over her own life.

Berry offers a solid performance—wounded but increasingly defiant. The screenplay for Bruised, which begins to explore Jackie's patterns of behavior and the underlying trauma that started them, eventually starts to fall into its own pattern, racking up challenges and conflicts, only to let the sports side of the story take over. That reliance on formula ultimately undermines the movie's real potential.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products