Rating:

Christy packs a strong dramatic punch, as every boxing film should. Unfortunately, the blow lands below the belt.

Starring Sydney Sweeney as female pugilist Christy Martin, the film chugs along almost entirely devoid of dramatic tension until, a little like a boxer against the ropes, it abruptly attempts to make up for lost time with a startling barrage of domestic abuse.

Nicknamed ‘The Coalminer’s Daughter,’ Martin was successful enough as a professional fighter to become the first woman signed by powerful promoter Don King (entertainingly played in the film by The Wire’s Chad L Coleman). 

In 1996 she even fought on the Las Vegas undercard of the world heavyweight title fight between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno.

It was that pay-per-view fight, against the Irishwoman Deirdre Gogarty, that is often said to have legitimised women’s boxing. 

After six brutal rounds, bleeding heavily, Martin won on points. Later, she became the first female boxer to feature on the cover of the magazine Sports Illustrated.

Christy packs a strong dramatic punch, as every boxing film should. Unfortunately, the blow lands below the belt (pictured Sydney Sweeney as Christy Martin)

Christy packs a strong dramatic punch, as every boxing film should. Unfortunately, the blow lands below the belt (pictured Sydney Sweeney as Christy Martin)

Nicknamed 'The Coalminer's Daughter,' Martin was successful enough as a professional fighter to become the first woman signed by powerful promoter Don King

Nicknamed ‘The Coalminer’s Daughter,’ Martin was successful enough as a professional fighter to become the first woman signed by powerful promoter Don King

Yet for all that, Christy is one of those biopics in which the subject’s renown is eclipsed by that of the star playing her. 

Others include Monster (2003), with Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and Joy (2015), about the woman who invented the Miracle Mop, played by Jennifer Lawrence.

The problem in this case is that Sweeney, made famous by the hit TV drama Euphoria in which she plays the promiscuous Cassie, has acquired not just fame but notoriety.

A registered Republican, the 28-year-old has become something of a poster girl for Donald Trump’s America. 

Trump himself has declared his admiration for a controversial ad for American Eagle jeans which featured the blonde, blue-eyed Sweeney in a play on words, suggesting that she has ‘great genes’. Critics of the ad screamed covert racism.

That perhaps explains the froth and foam that has greeted Christy, which had its European premiere at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday night, as part of the London Film Festival. 

Following its world premiere in Toronto last month, Left-leaning critics in North America lambasted Sweeney’s acting, some say for political rather than artistic reasons.

In 1996 she even fought on the Las Vegas undercard of the world heavyweight title fight between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno

In 1996 she even fought on the Las Vegas undercard of the world heavyweight title fight between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno

I hope not. She certainly doesn’t deserve a trashing for a committed performance, one for which she reportedly piled on 30lbs in weight. 

She’s excellent. Australian director David Michod just hasn’t made an especially good film.

It begins in 1989, with Christy Salters horrifying her conservative parents in blue-collar West Virginia not by taking a shine to boxing, but by fancying women. 

Her mother, Joyce (played more or less as evil incarnate by Merritt Weaver), wants to take her to the family priest, to ‘straighten’ her out.

Indeed, this is as much a story about homophobia and misogyny as about boxing. When Christy acquires a coach, Jim Martin (Ben Foster), he tells her: ‘Nobody wants to see a butch girl fight … why don’t you have a boyfriend?’ Christy has no genuine doubts about her sexuality, but is so eager to conform that she marries the coach himself, despite a 25-year age gap.

The real-life Jim Martin died last year, so cannot object to Foster’s portrayal of him as a man whose paunch and terrible combover are comfortably the most attractive things about him. 

Christy goes on general release on 28 November

Christy goes on general release on 28 November

He has no redeeming features, so it comes as no surprise when he is further revealed as a coercive brute, controlling every aspect of Christy’s life and stealing her money.

By now she has had a series of fights so explosive that they lack credibility: you can always tell a mediocre boxing film because every time they get in the ring, they belt each other like Tommy Hearns and Marvin Hagler at Caesar’s Palace in 1985, a battle for the ages.

The domestic violence, by contrast, is all too believable and powerfully depicted. Enraged by Christy’s rekindled friendship with a former girlfriend, her contemptible husband stabs and then shoots her, leaving her for dead. It is a genuinely shocking episode, which drew a sharp collective gasp from the audience at the Festival Hall.

Sweeney plays the horrifying assault scene and its aftermath very capably. Her politics shouldn’t matter to anyone. She’s a good actress, doing her middleweight best in a featherweight movie.

Christy goes on general release on 28 November