Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Lindsay Traves | Film | September 7, 2025
Things are instantly amiss in Sydney Sweeney’s award hopeful, Christy. It opens with some voiceover, where the actress known for her unique vocal affect struggles to cover it up in favor of a West Virginia accent. It’s a pretty quick view into the uneven and ineffective attempts the popular actress will make throughout her biopic performance.
Christy, named for its subject, is a choppy marathon through the life of Christy Martin, the boxer credited with putting women’s boxing on the map, who grew quickly to fame while struggling with drugs, her sexuality, and an abusive husband when outside the ring. This movie tries to cover it all, focusing on the awkward young basketball hopeful pivoting to boxing on a whim, and being slowly sucked into the world of her trainer and husband, and her eventual struggle to get out of it. Peppered within are references to her rejection of being a feminist icon, struggling with being closeted, and pushing up against her family who is unsure what her real needs are. It’s rough, weirdly paced, and has too much happening to ever focus on anything. Audiences might know enough about the real Christy to understand the significance of her late-night interviews and battles with Don King, but generally speaking, there is probably more to know about a woman being on the cover of Sport Illustrated while she struggles with image pressures than the movie allows.
Christy struggles through its runtime to find its tone, pace, and story themes. The comedic elements emanating from Don King feel so misplaced, and uncomfortable laughter seemed a default reaction to a movie covered in tears and blood drips. The frantic sprint through her life beginning in 1986 and the finale sometime after 2010 is so demanding, that only title cards and the odd wig change are able to keep the audience up to speed. And the wigs, my gawd the wigs.
Of course, there’s been buzz about Sweeney’s performance in this movie since the early days of filming where we were treated to an image of her “transformation.” Sweeney is a more than competent actress (than she often even gets credit for) and has given powerful and physical performances in movies like Immaculate, but this is simply not the one. There is nary a transformation to be seen beyond some poorly laid wigs, and things become even more obvious when Katy O’Brian shows up as Lisa Holewyne and completely eats Sweeney’s lunch. O’Brian looks like and moves like an athlete, and moments of them paired together highlight such a jarring divide between the two.
Biopics can easily struggle when they want to tell a complete story of one person, because a life as checkered and decorated as a professional athlete’s probably can’t be distilled into a theatrical runtime. Christy struggles so hard to find focus in its narrative, whether it’s about feminism, women-supporting-women, homophobia, abuse, or the perils of being a pro athlete. And with struggles in film craft and an overly ambitious cast seemingly working on different levels and tones, Christy is never able to land its emotional punches.
Christy had its world premier at the Toronto International Film Festival and is scheduled to be released November 7, 2025
