'Christy' Had a Chance to Be a Knockout, but Only Sydney Sweeney Has Any Punch
The Christy Martin biopic tells the story of a woman who never stopped fighting
November 9, 2025
On the 3rd, I was invited to a private screening of Christy, the highly anticipated boxing biopic that tells the sorely neglected story of lesbian fighter Christy Martin, who singlehandedly put women’s boxing on the map and came back from a near-death experience when her pathologically controlling husband stabbed and shot her.
Martin’s story is an irresistible mixture of aspirational elements, from her struggle as a young girl with an iceberg of a mom, a young West Virginian woman trying to make a living and a lesbian battling her own identity in the ‘80s and ‘90s, all of which then plays into how she copes with the specter of domestic violence.
It’s no spoiler to acknowledge that the real-life Martin came out a winner.
Unfortunately, as inspiring as Martin herself is — and as eye-opening as star/producer Sydney Sweeney’s performance as Martin is — director/co-writer David Michôd’s script and direction are too tentative.
Christy rarely lands any significant blows.
Sweeney plays Martin as a bad-ass with an Achilles heel, a naturally gifted fighter whose uncertainty when it comes to entering a male-dominated sport has her on her heels until success clears the way for the original brat era.
From early in her career, Christy’s life is carefully controlled by James V. Martin (Ben Foster), her much-older manager who convinces her she cannot achieve any of her dreams without him. Though she’s already experienced first love with her girlfriend Rosie (Jess Gabor), angering her witheringly judgy mom (Merritt Wever) and mostly passive dad (Ethan Embry), Christy leaves her behind for glory as a boxer, the trade-off including a marriage of convenience with the abusive Martin.
Sweeney effectively shrugs off her glamour-girl aura seemingly as easily as she puts it on for red carpets. Though given zero help from the makeup department, she convincingly portrays a woman from her late teens through her early 40s, imbuing the subject with the appropriate mix of working-class authenticity, star-in-the-making charm and, when called for, the kind of defense-mechanism bite so many of us employ when we’re in a closet and think others are about to open the door.
It’s important for the story that Christy not be portrayed as an angel, and she is not. Perhaps the biggest jolt is seeing her openly call out competitors as lesbians, something she does with relish, and something Sweeney brings to life with real empathy. Most deliciously, she eventually falls for the competitor she dogs the most in this regard, fellow boxing great Lisa Holewyne (Katy O’Brian). It’s a strategy that will kick her in the ass, but it’s easy to live vicariously through the rush she is feeling as she sets records and truly blazes a trail through her chosen sport.
Everything comes to a head in 2010, when Martin, her career on the downswing, leaves her husband and he tries to kill her. It seems as if a lifetime of fighting uniquely prepared her to survive that attack, and to her credit, Martin has been deeply involved in telling her own story. As she said at the Q&A I attended, it is her story, but it’s a story that has the potential to save lives.
As compelling as that story is, the film itself fails to mirror Martin’s intensity. Shot as a straight biopic that takes few risks, Christy is literal where its subject is aspirational. Too often, it feels like the film is checking off boxes rather than presenting genuine insight.
Aside from Sweeney, O’Brian truly stands out, skillfully portraying her character’s long-game approach to love, and displays great chemistry with the star.
Wever fretted at the Q&A I attended that she had been one-note as Christy’s mom, saying she had even gone back to the script the night before to check herself on her choices. But as she said, she played what the script gave her, which unfortunately wasn’t much beyond a malignantly unloving caricature. To her credit, a scene in which she cuts her daughter off emotionally at the one moment when the entire story could have turned around winds up as the most gut-wrenching.
That’s saying a lot for a film that also includes a graphic recreation of Christy’s near-murder.