Movie Review: Christy (2025)

Christy is a 2025 American biographical sports drama directed by David Michôd, co-written with Mirrah Foulkes. The film follows Christy Salters’s life before boxing, her rise as the most prominent female boxer in 1990s America and later depicts the 2010 attempted murder by her trainer and ex-husband, Jim Martin.

Cast: 
Christy Martin - Sydney Sweeney
Jim Martin - Ben Foster
Joyce Salters - Merritt Wever
Lisa Holewyne - Katy O'Brian
John Salters - Ethan Embry
Rosie - Jess Gabor
Don King - Chad L. Coleman

Synopsis

The film follows Christy Salters, a college basketball player from Itmann, West Virginia, who discovers her talent for boxing after winning a local women’s match in 1989. She is recruited by coach James “Jim” Martin and begins pursuing boxing, even as her secret relationship with her girlfriend Rosie ends and tension grows with her homophobic mother, Joyce. In the 1990s, Christy moves to Florida with Jim, marries him (because of his insistence), and rises to national fame under his control, signing with Don King, winning major fights, defeating Deirdre Gogarty in the first women’s boxing match shown on pay-per-view, and becoming the first female boxer on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Behind her success, Jim becomes increasingly controlling and abusive, involving Christy in drug use and sexual abuse while those around her dismiss her concerns. After a loss to Laila Ali and learning Jim has been stealing money from her, Christy decides to leave him and reconnects with Rosie, which leads Jim to publicly out her, and attempt to kill her in 2010. Christy survives the attack, returns to boxing without Jim and sees him sentenced to 25 years in prison.

My Take: A biopic without a total KO

I love Sydney Sweeney. I am a big fan of hers since Reality and Immaculate. Her performance in the R-rated The Housemaid was great, but I was not totally impressed by the storyline. I saw the trailer of Christy before watching it, and it built my expectation that it is going to be inspiring and motivational, about a regular female with gargantuan ambitions rising through the ranks to become a brusque champion in a male-dominated field. It made me think of the 2004 Hilary Swank film Million Dollar Baby, which is also one of my favorite films. So, I guess Christy will not be spared from being slightly cross compared with the story of Maggie Fitzgerald, who also dreamed of going into boxing not only out of passion but as a way out of poverty, since boxing paid well.

The Clint Eastwood-produced film started out with humility – the characters, especially Maggie, showed determination and modesty. Her trainer, Frankie Dunn (played by Eastwood), was calm and gentle, although cantankerous and moody. He eventually warmed up to his mentee and looked after her like a parent. That theme of courage, ambition, and humility remained consistent throughout the film.

Back to Christy, there were two reasons why I stayed until the end: first, because of Sweeney, and second, because I had to write a review. Otherwise, I would have stopped watching after Christy Salters finally gets the attention of her dismissive, misogynistic groomer—oops—trainer and future husband, James “Jim” Martin, who was 25 years her senior when they married. The succeeding scenes, starting with Jim stealthily bullying Christy during a sparring test in the gym’s boxing ring,  when he instructed her sparring partner to “break her ribs” to discourage her from continuing; and Christy’s mother, Joyce (Merritt Wever), who accompanied her to the tryout, awkwardly pretending not to see her daughter being savagely punched on Jim’s orders, already made the movie predictable.

That said, I do not wish to dwell on the technicalities of the film, nor on the real-life persona of Christy, but rather on the characterization and thematic framing, just to be clear. The film, in its entirety, did not move me. What it evoked instead is anger toward Jim’s characterization, and disdain toward his misogyny, abuse, and vileness; and equal disappointment toward Christy for not being able to make firm personal choices for herself, despite being a staunch go-getter when it came to her boxing ambitions. Christy is easily swayed by Jim, which is odd given that she could be defiant toward her mother.

That leads to another concern: the portrayal of the “bad” mother.

The film seems to carry an “anti-mother” sentiment. Audiences who have complicated relationships with their mothers might agree that mothers can be noxious. In the early scenes, Joyce, with her passive-aggressive tone, is depicted as maliciously maligning Christy and interfering with her relationship with Sherry, her girlfriend. This vicious mother narrative persists throughout the movie – the mother implying Christy is not good enough, guilt-tripping her over travel expenses to push her toward accepting Jim’s offer, siding with Jim instead of helping her, reminding Christy about shopping just before her US$250,000-plus fight with Ali, and later gaslighting her in the hospital by implying that having a girlfriend led to her near-death situation after the attack by her ex-husband.

Meanwhile, Million Dollar Baby also depicts a “bad mother,” but those scenes are sparse and, at least in my view, successfully establish that Maggie’s circumstances are incidental. The focus remains on Maggie’s ambition and her desire to become her own person, without external blame. That film, however, is fiction, based on Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner by F.X. Toole, making its character arcs and plot twists more formulaic. Christy, being a biopic based on real events, thus, understandably departs from the conventional hero archetype. Nevertheless, the film fails to maneuver its narrative toward a soul-changing closure.

What is downplayed is Christy’s accountability.

Her actions – or inactions, and her decisions as an adult do not culminate in remorse or a clear intent to finally do right by herself. Jim is arrested because he committed a crime and not because Christy held him accountable or sought intervention for his abuses. Christy’s lack of involvement in her own finances and career trajectory, at least as portrayed in the film, is not aspirational. The characterization suggests a self-focus where her missteps are framed as the result of others’ bad intentions rather than her own choices.

Christy is portrayed as a contradiction: physically and mentally courageous, yet spiritually weak; possessing robust physiological stamina but a fragile soul. I did not witness, or perhaps it was too subtle – moral courage. The male figures in her family are also insignificant. Her father, John Salters, a coal miner, is given little narrative weight. This could have been utilized to suggest Christy’s desire to escape that life, yet she even consents to being dubbed the “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Both paternal and fraternal influences are absent. The only dominant male figures are Jim and, to some extent, Don King. Even Big Jeff (Bryan Hibbard), her teammate and supporter, comes across as somewhat gutless.

I would not call the film misandrist …

Because even the female characters, except for the mother, are treated insignificantly. Metaphorically, they are weak, with Christy’s female opponents reduced to bodies pummeled by her power jabs. There is no cathartic moment here. She is portrayed as someone who goes with the flow, then settles on whatever option sticks. The narrative could have highlighted her flaws, then juxtaposed them with her choice of boxing because she is a “fighter” and shown her disproving false assumptions about herself through both victories and perseverance after losses. That transition could have elicited a motivational response.

Instead, the storyline remains flat.

Even the plot points – Jim’s trial, Christy’s testimony, her return to the gym where staff embrace her, her insistence on returning to boxing, and her eventual return to the ring, fell short of redeeming her character flaws.

That said, viewed through a more humanistic lens and without cinematic prejudice, the film retells the story in a raw, rough, loose, and soap-free manner. Maybe that is the intent – that Christy’s only aspiration is to win at something she knew she is good at, no other strong motivations, hence, no denouements. Or, perhaps, I simply missed the point of the movie.

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