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R | 2h 15m | Sports, Drama | 2025
Sydney Sweeney’s “Americana” was the left-jab of her recent 1-2-punch film-combo. The right-cross that followed was “Eden.” Now comes “Christy,” a movie about the first woman to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, which features themes relating to “Rocky,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Girlfight,” and “Raging Bull.”
As all of America knows by now, the above-mentioned Sweeney movies were preceded by her American Eagle word-play jeans ad—“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” This galvanized critics to loudly complain that the phrasing evoked eugenics, and was an offensive, fascist, Nazi-like reference to having supposedly superior genes. The result of which, like all top-notch marketing, is that Sydney Sweeney is now everywhere. The sheer liquid-silver crystal mesh dress she wore at Variety’s Power of Women event five days prior to this writing—putting more of her superior genetics on display—caused a friend of mine to say he finally understood how the Trojan War got started.
‘Christy’
Sweeney, 28 years old, has been steadily shifting her brand from pin-up-girl fare like “Anyone but You” with a series of uncompromising, unglamorous, serious-actress, no make-up roles. In addition to “Americana” and “Eden,” she played a feral junkie in “Echo Valley,” and a military whistleblower in “Reality.” With “Christy,” Sweeney smacks down a career-best turn as real-life domestic abuse victim and professional boxing sensation Christy Martin.
In “Christy,” Sweeny—a la Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull”—gained 30 pounds. After three months of intensive boxing instruction, she transformed herself into the West Virginia blue-collar-brawler nicknamed “the Coal Miner’s daughter.” Christy Martin became the fighting dynamo who paved the way for 2022 International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee and UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) legend Holly Holm.
Light Into Dark
“Christy” slowly segues from the boxing ring and into the increasingly deranged and controlling behavior of James Martin, Christy’s sociopathic boxing trainer and eventual husband (Ben Foster). In so doing, it gradually becomes clear that “Christy” has more in common with Margot Robbie’s “I, Tonya,” than “Rocky.”
In conjunction with career highs and lows, James humiliates, bullies, and gaslights Christy from her original sexual preference into their unhappy marriage. He pimps her out for seedy Florida motel-room “sex fights,” and carefully cultivates Christy’s cocaine compulsion.
Will Christy eventually stand up for herself? Australian director David Michod is known for raw, bare-knuckle drama, and we eventually discover that he and Sweeney have been toying with us: The film morphs from triumphant boxing rings to dark, gore-flecked rings of hell, with echoes of “Raging Bull.” It’s a testament to why I personally believe all women today—what with rapist MS-13 gang members still running around in the United States—should take up MMA (mixed martial arts).
Sydney
Sweeney’s Christy has layers of complexity. She paradoxically contains childlike, naïve, beaming pride, but also sudden flashes of resentment, beneath which flow volcanic torrents of repressed rage.
Sweeney’s got some topflight character actors to play off of, especially Merritt Weaver of “Nurse Jackie” as Joyce, Christy’s pious and long-suffering mother. The cast conspire to compound the protagonist’s sense of being trapped within a claustrophobic, hopeless milieu.
Sweeney can play good-genes-high-glamor like falling off a log. Amusingly, when she’s put on a bit of chub and wears a hobbit wig—chipmunk-cheeked, long-lashed, sans-makeup, no-tan Sweeney looks endearingly like a cross between Tweety Bird and Casper the Friendly Ghost.
It’s clear to show business, though, that she’s arrived and is here to stay. And as if the “good genes” label didn’t give the green-haired gym-avoidants enough to scream “eugenics!” about—consider this: Sweeney was also on her high school math and robotics teams. Sydney Sweeney is a rocket scientist. She could put on a see-through dress, start a war, and then make an intercontinental ballistic missile to end it. That’s just a whole lotta good genes right there.
What do we learn from this? Life is not fair. And in Sydney Sweeney’s case, that’s a good thing. This is why we pay 20 bucks to go to the movies.
‘Christy’
Director: David Michod
Starring: Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Release Date: Nov. 7, 2025
Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5
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