It must be Oscar season, because the bio-pics are beginning to come out of the woodwork.

Based on a true story, The Fighter takes a look at the emergence of boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) who helped train him in the working-class town of Lowell, Massachusetts. As the younger brother, Micky lives in the shadow of Dicky, who once 'knocked down' boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard to become the 'Pride of Lowell'. We begin to question Dicky's authority when we discover his crack addiction, and Micky's love interest Charlene (Amy Adams) suggests that perhaps his brother isn't the best influence on his emerging professional boxing career. Micky's family disapprove of the move away from their favourite son and Micky must weigh up his own interests over the pride of his family.

For a boxing movie, this one's up there with some of the best. It's got everything a good sport movie needs - impossible match-ups, the woman behind the man, the down-and-out moment and most importantly the extended training montage. All the great clichés are present, but the film would be decidedly vanilla if it weren't for Dicky. The typical elements are offset quite well by this character, and his painful journey through a world of drugs, crime and fallen greatness is perhaps the more interesting arc. Christian Bale shows his chops once again as one of the great character actors of his generation, and pulls a 'Machinist' by dropping bodyweight to accurately portray Eklund.

Wahlberg is lined up for an Oscar nomination for this role, but beyond the admirable peak physical shape he's put himself in preparing to play Micky Ward I can't see a decent reason why. He's the same old Marky-Mark, playing the youngest son in a divorced, working-class Massachusetts family with nine children - the exact situation he grew up in. More importantly though Wahlberg doesn't have much material to work with. He plays a boxer with a heavily limited emotional range that gets hit a lot. Unfortunately these days the Oscar tends to go to 'Most Accurate Portrayal of a Historical Character' rather than 'Best Actor' so if anything it's just increased his chances. It was a good performance, don't get me wrong - in my opinion it just wasn't Oscar material.

The best part of this film is rightfully Micky's title fight, and that's where it's redeemed. Everything ties in well to the main event and the sometimes contrived nature of The Fighter's writing and direction can to some extents be forgiven for a couple of great moments towards the end.