Director David Michôd brings the tragically powerful and vulnerably human story of Christy Martin, the most successful female boxer of the 90s, to the big screen in his 2025 film, “Christy.” Christy Martin, played by Sydney Sweeney, is the best female boxer in her nowhere town in West Virginia who gets a swing at the big time after she attracts the attention of the trainer, Jim Martin, played by Ben Foster. Despite her knockout capabilities in the ring that garnered her rise to fame, Christy Martin struggles to fight back against her emotionally and physically abusive trainer-turned-husband. Filled with homophobia, domestic violence and a near-death experience, “Christy” is the story of one woman who went all twelve rounds and came out the victor.
Despite the pacing obscuring the film’s time frame, the narrative is emotionally anchored by compelling performances from its knockout cast.
In “Christy,” there are understandably a lot of necessary time skips as the film covers the boxer’s life from the late 80s all the way to the 2010s. However, throughout each of the three or so time jumps that span near decades, it is unclear how much time we are spending with these characters at any given moment. Early on in the film, Christy Martin casually drops that six months have passed – but based on what the audience has seen, it felt like a week, tops. While this doesn’t detract from the beating heart of the film, it makes it hard to judge just how long some of the tragic events that unfold later in the movie have really been going on for – it could be years, but it feels like a month at most, oftentimes.
Nitpick aside, even though the movie doesn’t always do the best job of relaying how long Christy Martin has endured this abuse, the performances carry the meaning for you. A small role that can easily be overlooked, but drew a lot of reactions from the audience at the 2025 Austin Film Festival screening, was Christy Martin’s mom, Joyce Salters, played by Merritt Wever. Her doubting head tilts and passive-aggressive southern drawl when she tells Christy Martin to see a priest for dating a girl, or complete denial when her crying, panicked daughter tells her of Jim Martin’s abusive behavior, subtly work to dig the knife just a little deeper when our protagonist is already at her lowest.
Scenes that Christy Martin gets to spend away from Jim Martin are so few and far between that when she steals a moment to speak with her friend Rosie, played by Jess Gabor, or the manager of her gym who’s more like a brother, Big Jeff, played by Bryan Hibbard, they feel special, they feel intimate, they feel safe, despite our limited time with these side characters.
But enough talking around them, the pillars of “Christy” are Sweeney and Foster, so let’s talk about it. Other than clips of “Madame Web,” this is the first time I’ve seen Sweeney act in anything. That is to say, with “Madame Web” as my baseline for what this actress is capable of, watching her as Christy Martin is negative 60 to a million in no time flat! At the start of the movie, she expertly carries the cocky spunk of a teenager who’s really good at hitting things really, really hard. Also, the physicality needed to portray one of the most renowned female athletes of their time is no easy feat, but Sweeney sells every punch and feigns every blow as good as Joel Edgerton in the 2011 film “Warrior” ever could.
Throughout each of the time jumps, we see little sparks of the girl Christy Martin used to be, get literally and metaphorically beaten out of her. The excited kid who wants their shot in the big leagues, who leaps onto the ropes of the ring after winning a fight, the kid who stands up for herself, all fades away over the course of the film. And because Sweeney knows how to navigate each of these transitions, the change doesn’t feel like a departure from who we once knew, but a tragic casualty of the passage of time.
If a hero is only as good as their villain, then Foster’s Jim Martin is a worthy opponent. From the first time he says to Christy Martin, “you’ll be prettier if you grow your hair out,” and even well before that when he doesn’t let her get a slice of pie because he, “doesn’t want to train a fat boxer,” members of my audience would have liked to go a few rounds in the ring against him. The ways he manipulates Christy Martin aren’t even subtle, but are delivered with such an underlying threat of violence that the crowd cannot help but shudder at his every word.
And in spite of Jim Martin being of noticeably poor shape and quiet demeanor, Foster holds the character with this brutish masculinity that tells the audience he can snap at any moment. There is a gut-wrenching scene mid-way through the film where Jim Martin uses sparking practice as a means of getting away with abusing Christy Martin. In the climax of the film, without getting into spoilers, Foster plays it so casually, the moments of violence genuinely came as a shock and made that scene feel ripped straight out of “Psycho.”
By the time the credits rolled, the emotional impact of the narrative was so intense, it had some audience members darn near to tears as we were all so happy Christy Martin survived the events of the film.
Going into this film expecting something akin to “Rocky,” I pleasantly left having experienced a powerful narrative of abuse and trauma and the relationships that help us through it, all portrayed brilliantly by an expertly well-rounded cast, not caring too much about the pacing issues.
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Featured Image Courtesy of Austin Film Festival