I hadn’t planned on seeing Australian filmmaker David Michôd’s Christy, a biopic of former professional boxer Christy Martin. After the recent The Smashing Machine, I’d kind of tapped out on the boxing biopic. And I’m still not sure how I feel about Sydney Sweeney. She’s compelling and interesting to watch sometimes, but decidedly not all the time. And all the reports of Sweeney receiving Oscar buzz for Christy felt overblown. But luckily, it’s awards season which means I’m getting screeners in my email inbox, allowing me to see movies I otherwise would have missed. And sometimes the movies I didn’t even want to watch end up surprising me. That’s exactly what we have with Christy.

A biopic of famed professional boxer Christy Martin (Sweeney), we start when she’s quite young and her awful mother (Meritt Wever) discourages every choice she’s making. Things gradually start to go downhill when, even though she’s a lesbian, she is roped into marrying her coach and manager (Ben Foster). Christy rises to a level of fame, while the rest of her life begins to fall apart. 

Christy premiered earlier this year at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it received some positive, yet somewhat muted reactions. It’s easy to see now why most reactions leaned positive. The last half of Christy is gripping, powerful and emotional, but it’s an excruciatingly long road to get there. The first half of this movie is a traditional and relentlessly dull sports drama. It hits every beat you’re expecting and it felt like a mystery why this is being given an awards campaign at all. And then the second is a heartbreaking story about domestic violence, and it’s incredibly effective. As a result the film is wildly uneven and the tone doesn’t always work, but it leaves you with a proper gut punch that comes close to redeeming what came before. 

Sydney Sweeney, against all odds, is very good here, and I was not rooting for this performance or this movie when I pressed play on the screener. Sweeney is nothing special when she’s in traditional rom coms like Anyone But You, but when the role forces her to go to darker, more challenging places, like here or in last year’s Immaculate, she’s undeniable. Sweeney’s performance here has been lauded as game-changing and transformative, and for me the impact of all that didn’t really settle in until the last half. Initially, it felt like her accent was a little off and her wig was doing a lot of the acting for her, but once she properly disappears into the role, we stop seeing Sydney Sweeney and start seeing Christy Martin. And there’s no better compliment I can give to an actor in a biopic.

Ben Foster is appropriately smug, slimy and ultimately terrifying in the role of James, our protagonist’s coach who becomes her manager who becomes her husband in name only. He’s giving a memorable villain performance, and becomes increasingly more despicable as the film goes on. Meritt Wever seems miscast here as Christy’s horrible mother. Wever is given one note to play, and that’s it. And she’s an actress who’s proven time and time again she’s capable of more than this, so it’s a bit of a bummer to see her wasted in a role that’s not demanding much from her. Katy O’Brian, who I remember from last year’s Love Lies Bleeding, plays Christy’s rival boxer and later romantic interest, and I wish she had more to do. This is a role that needs her physicality and her presence, but not much more.

The filmmaking here is not particularly exciting. Director David Michôd is best known for the 2010 film Animal Kingdom, and all I know about that is it led to a very popular TV series of the same name. The direction here is adequate, but never terribly interesting. He reunites with his screenwriting partner Mirrah Foulkes, and the jarring tonal shifts are a problem, even if what the film leaves you with is ultimately quite effective. Not much to note regarding the cinematography or score. Everyone is doing competent work, but none of it gets exciting until it’s almost too late in the film.

Eventually, almost everything about Christy won me over, but I cannot understate how basic and boring that first half is. And in the film’s final act, it moved me to tears, and that’s what you leave the film remembering. You’ll also remember the work Sydney Sweeney is doing, and in a less competitive year I could easily see her sneaking into the Best Actress race. Her performance is the sole factor that makes Christy worth watching, and nothing can take away from that. Even if that first half is a monotonous slog.