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But first, An Ode to Mark Wahlberg.

When Mark Wahlberg first burst into our consciousness as Marky Mark, burst being the word, abs, pecs and attitude exploding out of his clothes and onto Calvin Klein underwear billboards, we were mesmerized but not convinced that his career would outlast his ads. (We conveniently ignored the fact that he would’ve been in New Kids On The Block with his brother Donnie.) We figured that he would move on to D-list celebrityhood like so many underwear models before him and be forgotten until the obligatory D.U.I. or arrest for sticking up a convenience store.

He was a mediocre rapper, even in the white rapper category—perhaps not as laughable as a Vanilla Ice, accent on perhaps (“I wanna see sweat coming out your pores”?), but without the literary breadth of an Eminem. Consider his hit single Good Vibrations, which is distinguished by his giant man-boobs and the vocals of Loleatta Holloway.

Yet he surprised us with his transition to the movies—not with a bang, but gradually building up momentum. Sometime in the mid-90s my druid and I caught a screening of the movie Fear, and when Mark Wahlberg walked into the frame we sat bolt upright in our seats and cried, “Sino yan!?” (Who is that?!—a reliable gauge for cinematic electricity as we also had Sino Yan moments when we beheld Russell Crowe in The Quick and The Dead and Edward Norton in Primal Fear.) He was so good in that movie, so compelling that we questioned Reese Witherspoon’s ability to make decisions. (Okay he’s scary but. . .)

Then came Boogie Nights where in the midst of Paul Thomas Anderson’s killer ensemble he blew us away. Even without the famous final shot. Sure there are Huh?! moments in his filmography—I’ll never get back the two hours I wasted on Rock Star, and the remake of Charade (Charade!) was unforgivable. But that was a brilliant performance as the foul-mouthed cop in The Departed, where he stole scenes from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson. He has established himself as a canny producer—We Own The Night, the HBO series Entourage and Boardwalk Empire. And now he has produced and starred in The Fighter, directed by his David O. Russell (Three Kings).

In short Mark Wahlberg has proven us wrong, and we are happy to be wrong. Thank you.

If the word “dysfunctional” had been in use in Tolstoy’s day the famous first line of Anna Karenina would’ve been different. Consider the family in The Fighter, based on the story of the boxer Micky Ward. (This is the project for which Mark Wahlberg studied Manny Pacquiao’s moves.) The mother (Melissa Leo) is a domineering harpy who favors her eldest son Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) and refuses to accept that he is a crackhead.

The father—of two or three of the nine grown children—has no say in anything. Dicky, once a promising boxer, is a screw-up who keeps talking about his comeback. The younger son Micky, also a boxer, is literally bloodied by his mother’s and brother’s stupid decisions. His girlfriend (Amy Adams) helps him get out of his family’s clutches, but then he finds himself pulled between his crazy family, his girlfriend, and his own need to make something of himself.

This holiday season as you spend mandatory time with your families, fielding intrusive questions and raking up old issues, take comfort in the family drama of The Fighter. (As The Royal Tenenbaums ad so wisely put it, “Family is not a word, it’s a sentence.”) Micky Ward has the advantage of being a boxer—he can work out his emotional turmoil in the ring, absorb punishment and dish out pain. You can only drink too much, lock yourself in the bathroom, and scream.

A lot has been said about the performances in The Fighter. Yes, they are stellar. Melissa Leo is both hateful and sympathetic. Amy Adams who is wonderful at fragile-but-strong roles demonstrates that she can also be sexy-tough. (We wish the filmmakers had also found characters for Dicky and Micky’s seven sisters, a cartoon Greek chorus with bigger hair.)

Christian Bale (whose Sino Yan?! moment came earlier, as the child in Empire of the Sun—I am still terrified by that scene where he drops his toy plane and lets go of his mother’s hand) has the showiest role as the crackhead Dicky. This could have been the ultimate reaching for the ham-and-cheese acting prize, but Bale finds the humanity in this loser held together by bluster and fake mama’s boy pride. When Dicky comes face to face with what he really is, you forget that this is the big acting moment—you almost look away because it’s too real.

Christian Bale in The Fighter reminds me of John Cazale. John Cazale only appeared in five movies, but those movies were The Godfather 1 and 2 (“Freddo you broke my heart”), The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter.

Finally there’s Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward. Mark Wahlberg stands at the center of this emotional tornado and calmly holds it together. It is a quiet, understated performance—he lets his body speak for him, which makes perfect sense because it was the muscles that drew us in the first place.

The Fighter is not The Raging Bull—nothing is, maybe not even The Raging Bull. But David O. Russell has a light touch and an energetic style that transforms this standard melodrama into a contender.