CHRISTY (2025) review
written by: Mirrah Foulkes and David Michôd
produced by: Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Teddy Schwarzman, Brent Stiefel, Justin Lothrop, David Michôd & Sydney Sweeney
directed by: David Michôd
rated: R (for language, violence/bloody images, some drug use and sexual material)
runtime: 135 min.
U.S. release date: November 7, 2025
It may seem that Sydney Sweeney wholly investing herself in a de-glammed boxing role for “Christy” feels like she’s priming for an Oscar next year. Well, good for her. The same can be said for Dwayne Johnson in his recent “Based on a True Story” role as an MMA fighter in “The Smashing Machine“. So, why not Sweeney? She’s certainly been going out of her way lately to take roles that don’t emphasize her sex appeal and instead give her potential opportunities to disappear into a role. Playing the role of Christy Martin, an aggressive scrapper who achieved success and popularity in the 90s as a boxer who rose out of obscurity. While the story, written by screenwriters Mirrah Foulkes and David Michôd (who also directs), incorporates some sports biopic conventions, the heart of the story revolves around harrowing real-life situations in which the most challenging fights in the titular character’s life take place outside the ring.
“Christy” opens in 1989, when we first meet young West Virginia resident Christy Salters (Sweeney), she’s a teenager who decides to enter a boxing ring for the first time at a local Toughwoman competition, hoping to win the $300 jackpot. To her surprise, she wins, and the victory exhilarates her. However, her home life puts a damper on her personal life, with her conservative Christian mother, Joyce (Merritt Wever), and her coal miner father, John (a quietly soulful Ethan Embry), casting judgment on her burgeoning relationship with her high school girlfriend, Rosie (Jess Gabor, playing a character based on Sherry Lusk, Martin’s real-life girlfriend at the time). Her win earns the attention of Larry Carrier (Bill Kelly), a boxing promoter from Bristol, Tennessee, who offers her a chance to fly her down and set her up with trainer Jim Martin (Ben Foster) to hone her boxing skills. Dismissive of the idea of a female boxer, especially one carrying her Pomeranian dog everywhere, Jim reluctantly takes her under his tutelage after witnessing Christy demolish her opponents.
While Christy continues to win bouts in the ring, her personal life suffers hits. Remaining a closeted lesbian, she continues to have to hide who she is, and curiously relents to a marriage of convenience in 1991 with the controlling Jim. He gifts her a baby pink boxing kit (complete with boots, shorts, and top) designed to soften her up, and present someone who’s more “feminine” and make people second-guess what Christy is capable of in the ring. He’s a pathetic manipulator, an insecure, jealous man who goes out of his way to rein in Christy’s sexuality with shame, monitoring her social life, and withholding her winnings. Christy and Jim move to Florida, where she signs on with promoter Don King (Chad L. Coleman), who dubs her “The Coal Miner’s Daughter”, landing notable nationwide fights (including numerous in Vegas) and becoming the first female boxer to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Despite all that, Christy has trouble paying bills, with Jim refusing to bring in any income of his own. Instead, Jim sells her off to men looking to wrestle women in seedy motel rooms and produces underground sexual videos of her. The ring becomes the only outlet for the pain and misery Christy endures in her marriage. She becomes more aggressive in fights, often calling out her opponents during press promotion and inside the ring. So focused on maintaining her persona, Christy almost misses out on a soulful connection with opponent Lisa Holewyne (Katy O’Brian, “Love Lies Bleeding”), who sees through Christy’s performance. It becomes clear that Christy will have to do more fighting outside the ring than she ever anticipated.
While “Christy” includes the requisite beats of the sports biopic genre, it ultimately winds up being an incredibly unsettling story about a woman getting out of an abusive relationship. There’s the origin story revolving around a nobody finding a passion and finding the determination to become somebody. There’s also needle drop montages included, along with setbacks, and big wins (and eventually cocaine) – and to be honest, those are tropes that I expect and want in such a story. However, early on, it becomes clear that Christy has had to learn to conceal who she is due to fear of shame and ridicule, making it a challenge for her to trust anyone.
Being able to hit someone in the ring was easier for Christy than figuring out a way to deal with her pain outside the ring. She was angry and she could hit someone. It was what she could do.
However, the moments when the gloves are off became increasingly perilous, with Jim constantly looking over her shoulder and her mother engaging in gaslighting tactics. It’s hard to tell how much of this is dramatized or what is truly real, especially since Foulkes and Michôd don’t go into the details of why Christy tolerated Jim and his manipulative cruelty. It’s likely she saw no way out or had no one to talk to about it, feeling like she owed him something and being far from home. There’s also the fact that Jim wasn’t just her abusive husband, but also her manager, and boxers need their managers. So, where was the way out for Christy?
In “Christy”, Michôd makes it known that the fighter’s greatest adversaries weren’t the ones in the ring. The two big adversaries here are played by Wever and Foster, two chameleonic actors who bring more to their one-dimensional roles than the script provides. Foster is someone who is always mesmerizing to watch and has excelled at playing toxic characters in the past, but this is some next-level lowlife stuff here. Not only is he in competition with Ethan Hawke for Worst Combover of the Year (see “Blue Moon” for reference), but his whispery voice and expressions of glazed-over disdain make the attempted murderer an even smaller man than he actually was. At times, Foster conveys such a (Note: Jim Martin died last year at Graceville Correctional Facility, located in the Florida panhandle, while serving a 25-year sentence.) Christy should’ve been able to trust the ones closest to her, but that’s not what happened, and that’s the real tragedy.
Sweeney, who also serves as a producer here, is wholly committed and credible in the titular role, even if there are times when we can’t help but think, “That’s Sydney Sweeney”. She has believable physicality, but she truly shines in the quieter moments when the camera focuses on Christy’s face, capturing someone who feels internally trapped. The last 15-20 minutes of “Christy” are deeply unsettling, while also showcasing Christy Martin’s bravest moment, which occurred in a courtroom.
The 2021 Netflix documentary, “Untold: Deal with the Devil,” delves into the tumultuous story of Christy and Jim in greater detail, featuring both Martins as talking heads, with Jim speaking from the Orlando Correctional Facility. That’s another thing that “Christy” has in common with “The Smashing Machine”, both movies have documentaries on the subject released before the dramatization of the real-life events. With both films, if you find yourself scratching your head or in disbelief, there are places to go besides a Google search.
RATING: ***
