Jess Gabor | Through the Shattered Lens

When Christy was released last year, it received a lot of attention for featuring Sydney Sweeney as a very unglamorous character.

In the role of real-life boxer Christy Martin, Sweeney spends the first hour of the film as a brunette who doesn’t wear makeup, wears baggy clothing, and has an unflattering haircut. Coming straight from the mining communities of West Virginia, Christy is someone who can flatten a guy with one punch. Of course, for all the attention that Sweeney got for downplaying her looks, she’s a blonde again for the film’s second hour and she never looks quite as bad as the filmmakers would have us believe.

If anyone does truly look bad in this film, it’s Ben Foster. Foster plays James V. Martin, the boxing coach who took Christy under his wing, arranged for her to get signed by Don King (played by Chad Coleman), and basically managed her when she was at the peak of her career. James Martin was also Christy’s horrifically abusive husband, a relentless, cocaine-snorting manipulator who built her up just to tear her down and who is currently in prison for attempting to murder Christy in 2010. When Foster first appeared in the film, I had no idea it was him. I didn’t discover that Foster was playing James until I glanced at the film’s Wikipedia page. Balding, overweight, and speaking in a slurred voice that makes most of his sentences sound like thoughts that died while trying to escape from his brain, Foster is unrecognizable as James. Ben Foster has played a lot of sleazy characters. (I still think his best performance was as the charismatic but sociopathic Charlie in 3:10 to Yuma.) James Martin is definitely one of the worst and the normally handsome Foster is made up to look about as bad as I’ve ever seen him look.

The film follows Christy from her time as a college basketball player through her boxing career. We watch as she becomes the female boxing champion and as she loses it all due to a fight for which she wasn’t properly prepared. We watch as she and James dabble in cocaine. Even more importantly, we watch as Christy struggles to come to terms with her own sexuality. In the film, Christy’s marriage to James is more about convincing herself — and her homophobic mother (Merritt Weaver) — that she’s straight than any actual love that may be shared between the two of them. At one point, Christy taunts an out opponent while giving interviews about how, when she’s not in the ring, she’s a traditional wife who loves to cook and clean. Christy is not only fighting the other boxer. She’s also fighting her own sexual identity.

The film is well-acted by Foster, Weaver, and Sweeney. Sweeney especially does a good job of portraying the anger that lies behind every punch that Christy throws. When Christy hits someone, she’s not just hitting her opponent. She’s also hitting the entire world. Unfortunately, the film itself often falls victim to the biopic cliches that one always seems to find in films about boxers, even ones that are based on true stories. This is especially true during the film’s first half. The second half, which focuses on Christy breaking free from James, is considerably more compelling. Much like last year’s The Smashing Machine, Christy is an uneven film that still leaves you respecting its real-life inspiration.

According to the imdb, Fred Olen Ray is, as of this writing, credited with directing 148 films. Few of those films have necessarily been acclaimed by the mainstream critics but almost all of them are a lot of fun when taken on their own terms.

Take The Twin for instance, on which Ray shares a directing credit with screenwriter Max Derin.

Now, in many ways, The Twin is a ludicrous film. It’s very, very melodramatic and the whole film’s central issue (i.e., which twin is which) could have been very easily resolved if just one person in the movie had used a little common sense.

But you know what?

Criticism like that misses the entire point of the film. The Twin is a lot of fun and it’s certainly not a film that’s meant to be taken seriously. This is not a serious look at mental illness, young love, sibling rivalry, or anything else for that matter. This is an over-the-top and rather silly piece of pure entertainment and, if we can’t enjoy something like that, what hope is there for the world?

The film deals with Tyler (Timothy Granaderos), who would seem to be almost perfect. He’s handsome. He’s intelligent. He’s compassionate. He’s a wonderful boyfriend, always polite and considerate to his girlfriend, Jocelyn (Jess Gabor). Even Jocelyn’s overprotective mother, Ashley (Brigid Brannah), seems to like him.

However, Tyler has a secret. Years ago, his parents were killed in a car accident. The accident was caused by Tyler’s brother, Derrick. As you may have guessed from the film’s title, Derrick is Tyler’s twin. And we all know that, whenever a movie is called The Twin, that means that there’s going to be a good twin and an evil twin. It turns out that Derrick is the evil twin and that accident was no accident.

Derrick has spent the last few years in a mental asylum. When Tyler shows up to visit his brother, the staff tells Tyler that Derrick has picked up a strange new habit. He’s telling everyone that he’s actually Tyler and Tyler is Derrick. Oh well, Tyler shrugs, that’s what happens when you’ve got a sociopathic twin.

Later, when Tyler is alone with his twin, he’s shocked when Derrick attacks him. Derrick knocks him out and then switches clothes with him. Claiming to be Tyler, Derrick walks out of the hospital and into the lives on Jocelyn and Ashley. Meanwhile, Tyler is stuck in the hospital, begging for someone to just give him a blood test so that he can prove who he is….

Anyway, you can probably guess what happens next but that’s part of the fun. Derrick (as Tyler) spends a lot of good, quality time with Ashley and Jocelyn, both of whom are surprised by how different “Tyler’s” personality seems to now be. Ashley, of course, is more suspicious than Jocelyn. (This film premiered on Lifetime so you better believe that overprotective mom is eventually proven right.)

It may be predictable but, like I said, it’s all a lot of fun. I don’t know which parts of the film were directed by Derin and which parts by Fred Olen Ray but, as a whole, the film is cheerfully content to be a B-movie and you have to kind of love it for that. At a time when everyone is taking everything so seriously and so many filmmakers are giving into portentous pretension, it’s nice to see a thriller that’s pure entertainment.

Plus, Timothy Granaderos is a lot of fun as both Tyler and Derrick. Tyler is nice but kind of dull. Derrick is exciting but totally batshit crazy. Granaderos seems to be enjoying himself as he switches back and forth between being good and evil. An evil twin movie is only as good as its twins and Granaderos is pretty good.

So, keep an eye out for The Twin. Melodrama this enjoyable should not be missed.