Sydney Sweeney gives ‘extraordinary’ performance in new drama film out this week

It's a movie with an excellent lead performance that tells an important story.

In the movie, Sweeney plays Christy Martin, the US boxer whose life is fascinating for a variety of different reasons.

Considered America's most famous female boxer in the 1990s, she is credited with legitimising women’s participation in the sport, despite her smack-talking ahead of fights often demeaning her fellow female fighters.

She is also a lesbian, but was closeted for much of her life. Instead, she married her coach, Jim (played by a typically transformative and intense Ben Foster, The Program), who was abusive and controlling.

The story sounds like it would make for a great film, akin to something like Martin Scorsese's masterpiece Raging Bull, another boxing biopic that is more about the violence outside the ring than inside. Sadly, Christy rarely comes close to reaching those lofty heights.

Despite being co-written and directed by the talented David Michôd - whose made some very good to great movies like Animal Kingdom, The King and The Rover - the filmmaking in Christy feels competent and respectful, but slightly flat.

There is one effectively agonising climactic segment, in which Jim's abuse of Christy suddenly escalates to shocking new levels. Probably a reason why this sequence is so effective is that it's one of the few times the film actually remains in a moment for an extended time, trapping the viewer with the protagonist in a terrible situation so we can better feel her pain and terror.

Aside from that, though, Michôd mostly adheres to the standard beats of a traditional biopic (it's a standard rise and fall and then recovery narrative), racing through years of Christy's life at a steady clip, but struggling to dig deep psychologically and occasionally stumbling in terms of energy and pace.

It's this that prevents Christy from being a truly great film. That said, we'd argue it's still a decent watch, thanks to its important subject matter and an excellent performance by Sydney Sweeney in the lead role.

In particular, the actress' physicality is extraordinary. Even when the movie doesn't make a big point of it, you can tell through the way Sweeney carries herself in the early boxing match scenes that Christy Martin isn't the best fighter in a technical sense, but is still able to overwhelm her opponents through raw power.

Then, over the course of the sports drama, through Sweeney, you witness the athlete's footwork and defensive moves getting better and better as she rises through the ranks.

The actress also proves very effective at conveying the difference between Christy Martin when she's on camera and in the ring, where she's brash and charismatic, to when she's alone or with Jim, where she feels more anxiety, fear and shame.

All in all, Christy is a good movie as opposed to a great one, even though it's anchored by a terrific lead performance.

Christy is out in Irish cinemas on Friday, November 28