“I want to win without him. In the ring it’s quiet it’s mine. There is chaos in the outside world, but it is quiet in here.” That’s one of the lines Sydney Sweeney delivers as Christy, and it perfectly captures the heart of Christy: the calm inside the storm.
This is a powerful, gripping biopic that punches hard both in and out of the ring.
Sydney Sweeney stars as Christy Martin, the trailblazing boxer who rose from small-town fights in the late ’80s to become the face of women’s boxing. She doesn’t just play Christy; she embodies her the swagger, the pain, the fight.
At the start, Christy’s living a double life. She’s secretly seeing her girlfriend Rosie (Jess Gabor), but at Sunday lunch with her strict Catholic family (Ethan Embry and Merritt Wever), the silence speaks volumes. Their tolerance is zero. In the ring, though, she finds something close to freedom.
Her life changes when she meets trainer Jim Martin (Ben Foster), who sees her raw potential. Foster nails the role a man who’s both charismatic and terrifyingly controlling. He plays Jim with the intensity of someone you can’t quite look away from and honestly, it makes sense that Foster chose not to meet the real Jim Martin the performance feels too dangerous to tether to reality.
After Christy marries him, things spiral. The film moves through her career across decades from the mid-90s to the 2000s and it’s easy to follow thanks to smart pacing and clean time jumps. Director David Michôd keeps the camera close, sometimes uncomfortably so, trapping us in Christy’s corner as her world narrows. It’s claustrophobic, intimate, and completely absorbing.
That’s not to say it’s all heavy. There are lighter moments too like Christy’s awkward meeting with Don King. His son asks, “You’ve met Jim, haven’t you?” and Don just keeps saying, “Nope, don’t know who you are.” It’s a perfectly awkward comedic beat that cuts through the tension.
Sweeney’s physical transformation is incredible. She trained for months boxing, lifting, pushing herself to the limit and it shows. As someone who’s boxed for about two years myself, including sparring sessions, I can say she moves like a real fighter. There’s an authenticity in how she breathes, hits, and even carries fatigue.
I’ve always loved sports biopics Coach Carter, Moneyball, I, Tonya and Christy definitely sits among them. Like I, Tonya, it digs into ambition, abuse, and the complicated ways fame can mask pain.
Sweeney’s performance is career-defining. She deserves awards recognition not just for the transformation, but for the emotional precision she brings to Christy’s journey.
If I have one critique, it’s that the ending needed a bit more. Real footage of the actual Christy Martin like Baz Luhrmann used with Elvis would’ve grounded the story even deeper in truth. It’s a small missed opportunity in an otherwise knockout film.
As Christy herself says, “I think boxing is my thing, and I am really fucking good at it.”
So is this movie.