Number 69: Melissa Leo as Alice Ward in "The Fighter" (Best Supporting Actress Ranking)

It is constantly really hard to decide the most current winner – especially nowadays when you have so a lot of awards, web web sites and so on that go over all performances and make you form an opinion about a distinct piece of operate ahead of you have even noticed it. In the circumstance of Melissa Leo, I predicted a whole lot – her sweep of the pre-Oscar awards, her critiques and almost everything else indicated a great functionality. Well…as you can see, I have to disagree here.

In The Fighter, Melissa Leo plays Alice Ward – the hard, ambitious and managing mom of Micky and Dicky, two brothers with various occupations in the boxing ring. Alice Ward is the variety of mother we currently know from other motion pictures – she is not only a mom but also a manager, she tries to get her sons in advance even though managing each one factor of their life. It’s the sort of character that helps make it effortless to root towards but in the stop, there is practically usually an obligatory scene with some tears when we learn that every little thing she does is out of really like.

The purpose why this performance did not operate for me is a mix of a variety of elements – on the a single hand, she is as well above-the-leading in a lot of scenes (the scene with her throwing the plates…I thought this variety of performing had died with Susan Hayward) or completely uninteresting in the other people. She establishes her character incredibly one-note appropriate in the beginning and she stays on that note for the whole movie. There is a scene at the beginning when she is crying in a automobile, let down by the conduct of her son Dicky. But this scene will come considerably way too unexpected due to the fact just before this second Melissa Leo unsuccessful to set up any kind of psychological chemistry with her male co-stars and so what could have been a transferring and powerful scene only felt out-of-place in the context of the motion picture and the character of Alice.

But even though Melissa Leo does not really perform really effectively with her co-stars in the starting, the chemistry among the cast enhances as the motion picture goes on. In the later on scenes, she develops a plausible romantic relationship with Christian Bale and the two actors succeed in making use of a related acting fashion that produces a believable mom-son-connection.

But most of the time, Melissa Leo merely fails to impress since the character is place into so many tough-to-purchase situations. Her discussion with Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg is accomplished so annoyingly, her large eyes when she 1st learns about Amy’s character are so exaggerated, the scene when she drives to Micky’s property with her 5000 daughters is so foolish. Not even a handful of a lot more serious appears for the duration of the entire proceedings can help save this performance – on the contrary, they relatively appear like a determined endeavor by Melissa Leo to keep herself from crossing the line from character to caricature but, regrettably, she crosses this line also often.

A occasionally entertaining piece of work that failed to impress me in most parts.