Christy (dir. David Michôd)

by Jack Martin | Nov 29, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 135 mins

UK Distributor: Black Bear Films

UK Release Date: 28 November 2025

WHO’S IN CHRISTY?

Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian, Ethan Embry, Jess Gabor, Chad L. Coleman, Tony Cavalero, Bill Kelly, Bryan Hubbard

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

David Michôd (director, writer, producer), Mirrah Foulkes (writer), Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Justin Lothrop, Teddy Schwartzman, Brent Stiefel and Sydney Sweeney (producers), Antony Partos (composer), Germain McMicking (cinematographer), Matt Villa (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Christy Martin (Sweeney) rises to prominence in women’s boxing…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON CHRISTY?

At one point during Christy, director and co-writer David Michôd’s formidable if formulaic biopic of the trailblazing female boxer Christy Martin, characters are discussing a potential movie being made about her, with Hilary Swank being touted for the lead role. Given that the scene takes place in 2010, when Swank would have been closer to 40, her casting for the twenty/thirty-something protagonist would have felt off anyway, not to mention unnecessary since she already has Million Dollar Baby to fill her sports drama quota.

Swank’s energy, however, is a clear inspiration for the actor who actually booked the role, Sydney Sweeney (who also produces). In her best performance to date, Sweeney captures not just the fiery spirit that Christy Martin was known for whenever she stepped into the ring, but does so in a way where she’s almost channelling the part as if it was played by Swank in that very universe. She easily carries a film that otherwise goes through many of the typical sports biopic tropes which, as much as Michôd tries, make it all feel all too familiar.

The film begins in 1989, when Sweeney’s Christy Salters is still in high school, playing on the girls’ basketball team and barely hiding her attraction to other girls from her deeply conservative family, including her eternally disapproving mother Joyce (a cold-as-ice Merritt Wever). Her talents in the boxing ring, though, are what draws the attention of coach Jim Martin (Ben Foster) who quickly takes her on as trainer as well as manager, and eventually as her lover and husband. However, as Christy grows among the ranks of female boxing, even becoming the first woman to be signed by the legendary promoter Don King (a scene-stealing Chad L. Coleman), her relationship with Jim quickly turns aggressive as he asserts every bit of control over her, and turns violent whenever his authority is challenged.

Michôd’s movie is not all that interested in rewriting the rulebook on sports movie biopics, as his and Mirrah Foulkes’s script plays it fairly safe when it comes to depicting numerous events in the central figure’s life and career. It shows the gradual rise to glory that’s largely simplified for the purposes of a movie length, as well as matches that often end in her favour to maintain the image of success (her few defeats are only ever mentioned in passing) complete with inspirational music as she triumphs. The film doesn’t touch as much as it perhaps should on her sexuality, even though her future wife Lisa Holewyne (as played by Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O’Brian) is a character in the movie, albeit one who shows up a couple of times as a source of light support. Even the strand involving this heavily abusive marriage adopts a typical structure, as Christy ignores the clear red flags early on that her soon-to-be partner is a controlling and vindictive creep, one of them being that he’s dressed head-to-toe in the clothes and hairstyle of one Jimmy Saville, while he continues to act worse and worse towards her until he barely even seems human anymore (not that he ever was, at least in this narrative).

While the script doesn’t take many chances with its structure or presentation in the way that, say, The Fire Inside did (and between these two biopics about trailblazing female boxers, Rachel Morrison’s film is the much better one), there is still a sense of passion behind it. You can tell that Michôd is at least trying to make it feel gritty and grounded, especially in how he shows the brutal violence that Christy takes both in the ring and in her own household, and while it never quite gets to Raging Bull or Million Dollar Baby levels of brutality – hell, even the recent Orlando Bloom boxing thriller The Cut felt far more gruesome than this movie does, and that didn’t even show nearly as much fighting – the director gives it an eerie quality where you’re sometimes sick to your stomach watching this person be subject to cruel, calculated treatment. This is particularly true during a climactic sequence that is admittedly quite chilling in how it is framed and performed, narrowly avoiding sensationalism to provide a disturbingly matter-of-fact depiction of a particularly extreme event in this person’s life.

All the while, Sweeney gives it her all in a lead performance that is truly absorbing, as the actor makes it wholly believable that someone with as much tenacity and energy as Christy Martin would go on to become the boxing legend she’s now considered to be. She nails the charisma and, indeed, the fighting spirit of a champion driven by success and admiration, but also the vulnerability of someone looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places, whether it’s her scumbag husband whom Foster is quietly menacing as, or even her own family who coldly dismiss her genuine concerns out of their own prejudices and judgmental personalities. Yet, as a character, Christy is not so clearly defined until much later in the film, with the script largely portraying her as the ingénue with not a lot of agency in her own life or career, so by the time it starts getting into how she feels whenever she steps into the ring or whatnot, it feels like it comes out of thin air as there’s not been much time devoted to these inner thoughts.

It’s undoubtedly a wobbly film that often loses balance, but thanks to some sharp filmmaking and a firecracker of a lead performance, Christy survives just long enough to go the distance.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Christy is a formidable if formulaic sports biopic that benefits from David Michôd’s sharp direction and an engrossing lead performance by Sydney Sweeney, but it’s knocked down by a script that plays it fairly safe and ultimately doesn’t feel all that different from numerous other movies of its type.