Christy

Christy
Starring Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O'Brian
Directed by David Michod

The real life Christy Salters Martin is a firecracker, a woman of small stature but big dreams, who has a desire to fight and box like her life depends on it. She overcame being a lesbian in a time where it was frowned upon, forcing herself into a marriage to conceal her inner "demon," and allowed herself to be controlled by her new husband and everyone around her. The only place she found she could be herself was in the ring, but outside she was controlled by everyone around her to the point where it almost cost her her life. Sadly, the movie "Christy" doesn't take any risks in its storytelling, instead relegating itself to the traditional biopic tropes that - at 135 minutes - makes you feel like you're in the ring for a ten-round bout of boredom.

In 1989, Christy Salters (Sydney Sweeney) finds that she's really good at fighting and boxing, and chooses to make a career out of it, to the dismay of her constantly disapproving mother Joyce (Merritt Wever) who doesn't like how close she is to her "friend" Rosie (Jess Gabor). After winning her first fight, she's brought in by trainer James Martin (Ben Foster) who trains her to be the best female boxer ever in a world where there really weren't any yet. As she keeps winning fights, she gets romantically involved with James and they eventually get married, and he begins abusing her mentally and then physically, threatening to kill her if she left him. Yet she keeps fighting in the ring where she's the most alive, and as the years pass she slowly gains the courage to leave James, but at a deadly cost.

Sports movies like this are literally a dime a dozen, and boxing films especially. It's hard to really stand above the greats like "Rocky" and "Creed" and make a name for yourself, even though this is actually a true story. The cinematography, the performances, the story, the editing - all of it needs to come together for a hail Mary pass to make the audience involved, but sadly apart from the performances everything else feels formulaic and dull, slogging its path way too slowly to the conclusion, and when you see the typefont on screen talking about Christy's future you've already run for the doors.

That could be putting things more harshly than I should, and honestly there's not a lot of fault in the movie apart from its too long runtime and obvious path. It's not like it was shot terribly or the performances were the worst, but overall it's just a big shrug and sigh as it keeps going, and going, and going...and going. We get the fighting montages. We get the training montages. We get the font pointing out what year it is at any given time. We get the Wikipedia version of Christy's story without delving deeper into the woman herself. Why does she fight? Because she's good at it. We never find out why she was passionate about it or what got her involved, it just happened that way. Why did she stay with James? Because she had to, and was too afraid to leave him until she found the courage to do so. Like every Lifetime movie where we yell at the actress to leave earlier, we sit through numerous scenes of abuse at the hands of her husband whom she could've easily knocked out with one punch.

Sydney Sweeney has had a rough go at things this year, with the troublesome ad campaign for American Eagle that shattered her up-and-coming star status that hit its zenith with "Anyone But You." 2025 saw Sweeney star in three movies so far - "Americana," "Eden," and now "Christy" (with "The Housemaid" coming out in December), and all three movies have been box office bombs. Some may say it's due to her real-life controversy, but for me it's because she hasn't picked the right movies. "Americana" was fine, but forgettable. "Eden" was too long and convoluted. "Christy" is forgettable and too long. Yet in all three movies there's no denying her acting ability, and the way she fully disappears into her roles. "Christy" does this best, trading in her blonde hair and blue eyes for a black wig and brown contacts that makes her wholly unrecognizable, and she uses this to play Christy with equal parts tender and feisty, dropping F-bombs left and right as she literally destroys any woman who steps in the ring with her. She fights with anger, because she's been forced to hide who she really is from the world, but we don't go any deeper than that. We needed more story, more a reason to feel for her but instead it's just a generic story.

Just as Sweeney transforms into her role, so too does Ben Foster who plays her much older husband James (in real life Christy was 22, and James was 47 when they got married). I heard Foster was in the film and it took me thirty minutes to finally realize I was looking at him the whole time, as he was hidden under fantastic prosthetics and wigs that made him look a lot older and a lot more out of shape. Equally hidden is Merritt Wever, who plays Christy's mother Joyce and who also completely transformed for her role. While James is vile, despicable, and monstrous, Joyce isn't a saint either. She tries to control Christy and berates her for her lesbian tendencies, and even when Christy comes to her telling her how bad James has been treating her, Joyce dismisses her and forces her to stay. Both characters are horrendous, and I literally hated them both - which shows how great the performances were.

Sadly, we're not given any deeper meaning to Christy's life other than loving fighting and the horrible home life she existed in. We don't get a deep dive into her character and the years go by in a flash, where if we didn't get title cards stating the year we'd think it was all in one long week. It's odd that a movie so long has so little to tell, but that's what "Christy" is - a ten round boxing match that could've ended after five.

The Score: B-