I was really looking forward to this movie. This is one of the few sports controversies that I was aware of as a kid. I have only been ice skating once in my entire life (surprise, I wasn't good at it) but I always watch figure skating on the Olympics. Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) grew up with one ambition: to skate. Despite being poor and uncultured in a sport that values being rich and feminine, Tonya persisted. Her mother (Allison Janney) pushed her through a series of psychologically and physically abusive trials, eventually badgering one of the premier figure skating coaches, Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson), to get Tonya ready for competition on a national level. Around the same time, Tonya met Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) and began a tempestuous, violent, co-dependent relationship. After being spooked by a death threat, Tonya and Jeff get the idea to psych out Tonya's main competition at Nationals, Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver), by mailing her anonymous death threats. Through a combination of ambition and truly stupendous idiocy, this morphs into the now legendary assault.
This was done in a faux-documentary style that I didn't think really worked for the narrative. I would have preferred to actually see interviews with Harding and Gillooly if they were going to go that route, rather than have Robbie and Stan act those out. It was just off-putting for some reason. Robbie is fantastic here and so is Janney, playing the acerbic LaVona. I don't know if this film will make you have any more sympathy for Tonya Harding, but it's a decent enough watch for the people in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment