Sick Product of a Sick System

Pretty Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Some i loved and some i felt could've been cut out or made shorter. execution-wise that was like an 8/10 (because it was so long) but i love the story. it has that feeling of a story brought to justice.

The story of disgraced Olympic ice-skater Tonya Harding is told to us in a pseudo-style documentary fashion with the actors recalling the events that led to the knee-capping scandal of her main rival. There is cartoon-ish style violence throughout with Tonya's head being smashed into mirrors and the like and her mother using her for knife-throwing practice. The characters are one-step outside of reality, which fits the mad, crazy world of Tonya perfectly as she struggles to get by domestic violence, lack of money and a cast of idiots around her to achieve her Olympic goal.

The acting in the film is quite good. I would give that part an 8. The down side is the movies massive attempt at painting Tonya Harding in a good light. I still feel she was a great part of her own demise.

The life story of Tonya Harding, champion ice-skater. From her life as a young child to teenager to adult life everything centred on ice-skating. Then came the Nancy Kerrigan incident...Great movie. Could have easily been a fairly dry paint-by-numbers biopic but writer Steven Rogers and director Craig Gillespie infuse the movie with humour and lightness giving it a great deal of energy and engagement. There's also a character-based side to it, especially in terms of how Harding's mother shapes her personality and views on life. This leads her to accept the abusive, dysfunctional relationship with Jeff Gillooly, her first husband, which brings about her downfall.The light tone does change from a point, and it is a bit disconcerting. As things get more criminal, the lightness is replaced by a seriousness and the movie starts to resemble more the conventional biopic one would have expected. There is still a degree of humour: the bodyguard and the hired thugs take stupidity to another level (and, by the looks of things, this wasn't dramatized - they were really that dumb). However, the come-down from the energy and comedy of the first half does make for an uneasy transition. There was no way round it though - it would have been inappropriate to maintain the level of frivolity considering what happens.Ultimately the transition works out well, as the movie ends very emotionally.Superb performances by Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding and Allison Janney as her mother. Robbie would not have seemed the right person to play an uneducated, working class, incredibly intense, foul-mouthed competitor with hordes of demons but she pulls it off with aplomb. Well deserved her Best Actress Oscar nomination.Allison Janney won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance and the choice is hard to fault. She is fantastic as the aggressive, uncouth mother.