Film Review – Christy

November 9th, 2025 | POSTED BY Allen Almachar

Credit should go to Sydney Sweeney for not taking the easy route with her film career. Any lesser actor would coast on their movie star popularity for bland gigs that pay well but offer little artistic challenge. That’s not the case for Sweeney. Yes, we’ve seen her in big mainstream projects such as Anyone But You (2023) and Madame Web (2024), but she’s also made interesting turns in Nocturne (2020), Reality (2023), Immaculate (2024), and Eden (2024). While the parts she takes have varying levels of success, it does show her willingness to try different things to push her skillset. Christy (2025) is her biggest challenge yet – heading a biopic tracing the life of female boxer Christy Salters Martin. 

Directed by David Michôd (who cowrites with Mirrah Foulkes and Katherine Fugate), the film follows Christy from her humble roots as a coal miner’s daughter in West Virginia, slowly making her way up the ranks with her ferocious fighting style, being promoted by Don King (Chad L. Coleman), and becoming one of the most successful female boxers of the 1990s. Of course – as is the case for any picture about a famous athlete – this isn’t just about a person’s success and failures within their given trade. As things progress, we learn about Christy’s personal ups and downs: how she pulled herself out of near poverty but dealt with darkness throughout her entire life. This would include a mother (Merritt Sever) who was repulsed by Christy’s attraction to women. To a larger degree, we learn about the toxic relationship she had with her husband and trainer, Jim Martin (Ben Foster).  

This is heavy material, and Michôd and his team do not shy away from it. Instead, Michôd tackles it head on, refusing to look away from the ugliness. There are points where we see Christy basking in glory – such as when she knocks out an opponent or proves her naysayers wrong. But the elements that stick with us, the images that remain as we leave the theater, will clearly be the ones involving despicable characters coming into her stratosphere. Ben Foster plays Jim Martin as a greasy, beer-bellied, heavy breathing slimeball. He uses the notion that he is Christy’s trainer to take advantage of her – whether that is dictating whom she can or cannot speak to or work with. He puts her in terrible situations, as though he were her pimp. And when she shows any kind of resistance, uses drugs or physical violence to break her down. Foster is very convincing in the villain role. As soon as he is on screen, we have an idea of what he is all about. In a way, he pushes it almost too far. He’s so much of a scoundrel from the get-go that we wonder how anyone could possibly interact with him. 

Sydney Sweeney is stellar as Christy. She handles the physicality of the role well. The way she moves in the ring, bobbing her head from side to side, throwing punches with force and authority, etc. It all looks as though she had been training for years. The fight scenes, although brief, are well staged and shot, allowing us to see Sweeney right in the thick of things. But her best moments are not the boxing scenes, but in the smaller character interactions. This is where she gets to shine, to show off the character’s personality and resilience. She manages the varying emotional states with ease, whether she needs to be tough or vulnerable. As Christy’s pain and anguish intensifies, Sweeney raises her acting to meet it. One big exchange, in which Christy’s cries for help from her mother fall on deaf ears, showcase just how good Sweeney is at navigating the character’s psyche. This is a very good performance, and hopefully it will open the doors to even bigger and better things for Sweeney.

The narrative unfolds in a traditional format, starting at the beginning and hopping along throughout time sequentially. Along the way, we see a pattern of trauma and neglect. Those who were supposed to be the closest to Christy were also the ones who wouldn’t acknowledge her abuse. It seemed her family was more concerned about her having a lesbian affair with her lover, Rosie (Jess Gabor), than Christy’s wishes to live her own life. They would rather believe Jim’s lies about her self-destructive behavior without seeing that he was the cause of it. I don’t claim to be an expert on the intricacies of spousal abuse and domestic violence, but the writing and direction does present those themes as complicated cycles that are hard to break. Christy was put in such a desperate situation that she feared leaving Jim. While I don’t think the film explores this thoroughly enough, it does open the door for a larger conversation to be had.

Stylistically, Michôd shapes the film as a standard biopic. The editing (Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance) includes various montages of Christy training and mowing down her adversaries one by one. The cinematography (Germain McMicking) shoots the fight scenes realistically – often having the camera in the ring following the combatants like a referee. The lighting floods the backgrounds in darkness, so that spectators and journalists can barely be seen. The fashion in which the fights are juxtaposed with personal scenes was jarring. A sequence showing Jim threatening to kill Christy is immediately followed by a shot of her jumping into his arms celebrating her latest victory. It was a strange mix that creates a tonal imbalance.

For the most part, Christy follows a very familiar biopic pattern. The humble beginnings, the quick ascent, the glorious apex, disastrous fall from grace and eventual redemption – it’s all there. It’s only until the last third where Michôd takes things to surprising (and shocking) territory. If you know anything about what became of the real Christy and Jim’s relationship, you know what I am talking about. Michôd goes through the details with excruciating agony, letting things play out in near real time to amplify the horror of the situation. This is where the filmmaking is at a heightened state. We spend most of the runtime kind of expecting where things are going, because we have seen enough biopics to know. But this third act catches us off guard and puts us on a highwire. 

Christy is a good, but not great biopic. It’s anchored by a production that doesn’t sugarcoat its subject matter. There are strong pieces, such as a committed performance from the lead actor. But it also felt strangely conventional. For a movie that covers such bleak and disturbing areas, it doesn’t take enough chances. This felt more like a book report than an emotionally driven cinematic experience.

Anyone But You, Ben Foster, Chad L. Coleman, Christy, David Michôd, Eden, Ellen Lewis, Germain McMicking, Immaculate, Kate Sprance, Katherine Fugate, Madame Web, Merritt Sever, Mirrah Foulkes, Nocturne, Reality, Sydney Sweeney