The song at the end of 'Warrior' by The National is Emotional Impact Done Right
“About Today” by The National in the Warrior end scene finalizes a powerful story of reconciliation.
Spoiler alert!
First off, if you haven’t seen Warrior and you want to remind yourself what it feels like to happy-cry, quit everything and go watch it now. Then come back and read the analysis, and salt a bowl of popcorn with your tears. “About Today” by The National plays during the climax of Warrior, and I’ll do everything in my power to not copy and paste 30 Youtube clips to just show the whole movie.
It’s that good. I don’t say that because I’m a testosterone-infused minotaur man, stomping around punching holes in the drywall while drinking a six-pack of Mountain Dew. The fight scenes are brutal and choreographed better than Lady Gaga choreographs neon body paint, but the cage-grappling is a vehicle for three gorgeous performances and a deep story of trauma, healing and forgiveness.
The context:
Tommy (Tom Hardy) is a former Marine who fled as a youth with his mother, due to his dad’s (Nick Nolte) violent alcoholic abuse. Brendan (Joel Edgerton) is Tommy’s brother, struggling to provide for his family, and fighting in underground bar parking lot cage matches for side money. Both are estranged from their dad, Paddy, who attempts to reconnect with Tommy and Brendan.
They’ve both entered the Sparta MMA tournament with $5 million on the line. After multiple grueling matches, they face off in the championship round, and Brendan has just snapped Tommy’s arm like a piece of sun-baked driftwood.
Tommy, consumed by his rage and pain of abandonment, finally finds forgiveness with Brendan on the mat.
I can imagine it would be hard to brand a fight movie for the Rom-Com crowd. Warrior made $23 million off a $25 million budget, which is criminal. It’s not only the greatest movie ever made in the crowded genre of “two estranged brothers in a cage match” – it transcends genre as a movie you need to see.
I spent five paragraphs talking story and didn’t even mention the Tom Hardy-Joel Edgerton combo. I’ll watch a movie just because Tom Hardy. I’ll watch a movie just because Joel Edgerton. Both of them together as traumatized brother fighters? It’s like taking a boat out at midnight and floating past a pair of Assateague stallions braying and galloping in unison under a full moon. There’s just nothing you should want to do other than sit still and watch that for two hours, and then let the Warrior end song bombard your emotions.
Nick Nolte’s performance includes one of the greatest alcohol-fueled rage scenes of all time. He received a Best Supporting Actor nomination and could have won on the strength of this scene alone. Sober for years, Paddy relapses in the hotel when Tom Hardy tears him down and berates him in the downstairs casino.
Again, if you haven’t already seen this, and you aren’t here just splashing around in the reminiscent goodness of Warrior, go steal your in-law’s Hulu password and watch it.
Warrior is a powerhouse emotional conflict without The National snipping your heart tendons with kid scissors. The ending, however, is perfectly placed and necessary for the resonant impact. All the pain and rage, years of entrapped abandonment, for six minutes, is exchanged in a transaction of fists.
Then, the breakdown, and reconciliation.
Many conflicts with people you loved hard go unresolved and fade into a quiet, bitter piece of stone, and grow over with moss. Warrior is about one of those devastating, strung out, residually damaging conflicts that end the right way, with the love that was always there.
That’s why Warrior is such a unique film: maybe you’ve been trying for years to overcome a hardened conflict, without resolution.
All you had to do was step into a cage.
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Movies with Tom Hardy to get you bothered:
Movies with Joel Edgerton to get you bothered:
Animal Kingdom
The Gift
The King