Christy Salters (Sydney Sweeney) already knows her way around disguises by the time her trainer (and eventual husband) Jim Martin (Ben Foster) gifts the burgeoning boxer with a baby pink boxing kit. Boots, shorts, top, it’s all pink, delicate and feminine and sweet, and designed to make people second-guess what Christy can do in the ring. For as long as she’s been alive, Christy has been putting on masks, hiding behind personas, playing a character for whoever she needs to please. But, crucially, Jim’s kit comes hand in hand with something different: Christy’s realization that boxing, even if it requires some fudging, really just might be her thing.
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That’s to put it lightly. In David Michôd’s grim (and occasionally darkly funny and ultimately crowd-pleasing) biopic “Christy,” we ostensibly follow Martin’s rise to the highest echelons of female boxing, while we’re really following Martin’s too-horrible-to-be-fake life story. It’s got all the trappings of the usual true-life sports drama — high highs! incredibly low lows! fractured relationships! Don King! — but Martin’s real story is so gobsmacking that the boxing aspect of it can only be one facet of it.
Put plainly, this film about a boxer is mostly about what it actually takes to be a fighter. And while Michôd has always toward the dark with his work, Martin’s tale demands that. This is a sports biopic in which the hard workouts are a relief and the big wins can’t hold back life’s worst monsters. Stand up and cheer? That’s a movie for someone else, even if Christy Martin is so inspiring as a person (not just an athlete) and Sweeney is so credible in the role that the film seems made for big ovations at its conclusion.
It’s a rough road there. Spanning over 20 years of Martin’s life, Michôd and Mirrah Foulkes’ screenplay (with story by Katherine Fugate) leans into the general shape of the triumphant sports story — rising talent, gritty road to glory, many setbacks, eventual big win — but reimagines it as a much more common tale. A sadly common tale. Without putting too fine a point on it, what “Christy” asks is: What if the world’s best female boxer was wholly unable to defend herself outside the ring? As blunt as that might sound, it’s the truth of Martin’s tale, no matter how hard it might be to swallow. Real life? No, it’s not like the movies, even if “Christy” occasionally leans on the usual tropes to push Christy’s pain and peril to breaking point after breaking point.
Picking up in 1989 and running straight through until 2010, “Christy” tracks the punchy boxer from novelty (again: pink boxing kit) to the top of the boxing food chain. In the film’s opening voiceover, Sweeney (with a West Virginian twang that’s never over the top) tells us that Christy fought like she had demons in her, like she was battling everyone who had ever hurt her, fighting for her life. She was. Boxing is presented as something Christy likes, something she’s good at, and as her star rises and Jim (a boxing trainer who claims to have connections to Don King) starts shaping her to his whims, it’s easy to not quite see what’s actually happening here.
The bloom is never quite on the rose, thought, as we learn early on that Christy has a girlfriend she likes a whole lot, even if her family (particularly her mother Joyce, played by an enraging Merritt Wever) is convinced the gay can be prayed out of the both of them. Christy’s first big costume? Playing straight, or straight-ish, ending up with Jim because it just seemed easier. But as he consumes Christy’s life, he can’t break her spirit, and he sure as hell can’t take away her talent.
Sweeney disappears into the role, not just changing her hair color, eye color, accent, and way of moving, but her general air, her overall mien, the space she takes up in a room. While the choice to have Sweeney play Martin over so long (and so fraught) a period of her life is occasionally tricky — Sweeney doesn’t look so different from ages 21 to 42, as the film demands — the actress neatly fits into the role of Christy in a way that makes it hard to imagine anyone else playing it.
While Sweeney, who also produces the film and has made no secret that it’s a major passion project for her, is the main draw here, she’s supported by a uniformly strong supporting cast. Foster, who has always been skilled at portraying male fragility in its many forms, is horrifying here (a compliment). Wever is enraging (also a compliment). Ethan Embry as Christy’s dad is heartbreaking. Chad L. Coleman, as Don “Only in America!” King, is a bit broad, but the spirit he brings to the part lifts the entire movie in its darker moments. And Katy O’Brian? The “Love Lies Bleeding” breakout brings an incredible combination of tenderness and charisma to her role as Christy’s one-time nemesis Lisa Holewyne.
For all its success as a profoundly grim story of human perseverance, “Christy” does boast some classic fighting sequences. Boxing makes for a hell of a cinematic watch, quick and easy to follow, winners obvious, losers clear, plenty of blood to spill, and Michôd doesn’t get fussy with his fight scenes. They also offer some of the film’s most upbeat moments, especially early on, as Christy trounces her competition with a verve and pluck that’s infectious. That she’s a deeply gifted fighter is never in question, even as the film tries to navigate around the thornier aspects of her personality and predicament.
While “Christy” has long been positioned as an awards play for Sweeney (like it or not, being willing to break bones for a real-life story seems to just lend itself to those kinds of expectations), her performance here is more nuanced and more painful than early indicators fully let on. She’s committed to the role, but she’s also committed to a story that doesn’t totally fit the usual mold. It doesn’t pull punches, even if that ultimately leaves a different kind of mark on its audience.
Grade: B+
“Christy” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Black Bear will release it in theaters on Friday, November 7.
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