TIFF 2025: Christy Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Christy tells the story of professional boxing legend Christy Martin (Sweeney), from finding her passion and an outlet through the sport of boxing and her subsequent rise up the ranks, meanwhile, also contending with troubled home life with her abusive husband and coach Jim (Foster) and closeted homosexuality. In the end the film is yet another biopic that falls into the trap that almost every one falls into, being too broad and offering little nuance. Aggressive from a young age, she tried her hand at basketball, but scolded for her overly hostile behavior, once she discovered boxing, she showed signs of being the next prodigy. However, behind closed doors, she faced dismissive parents, regarding her sexuality and her abusive coach and husband. 

Spanning over nearly 20-years, the film covers too much ground, providing little more than what could be easily found on Christy’s Wikipedia page. Merely a summary of her life with little flare, it delivers a paint-by-numbers account of what happened over the course of her life. This path almost does a disservice to the real subject of the film, a person said to have “legitimized women’s participation in the sport of boxing” and was a trailblazer in her sport. Instead, she’s reduced to a formulaic biopic that barely covers the nuances of her life, doesn’t delve into the true intricacies of her relationship with Jim. The best act of the film is definitely the final one, when Jim’s abuse significantly escalates. To that point, one can’t help but wonder of it had been better served had it focused on the last few years of her career, rather than its entirety. As it stands, the film fails to dig deep enough into its subject matter, opting for a safe approach in how it depicts Martin’s story. 

Sweeney is great as Martin, offering up a typical “physical transformation” type of performance. Christy has been a known passion project of hers for a long time, and as a producer on top of being the star of the film, she gives the project her all. Come the final act, her performance becomes that much more emotional and powerful to watch. That being said, it is simply a shame that the rest of the film never does her performance justice. Similarly, her performance feels out of place considering the ultimate arc of the film. As the story reaches the end, the latter incarnation of the character is never quite convincing, pulling audiences out of Sweeney’s performance. Weaver, on the other hand, feels out of place as Christy’s mother Joyce, a character lacking any depth beyond her superficial flaws. While the film may be accurate in its portrayal of Martin’s parents, religious and unaccepting of her sexuality, the way they are portrayed comes off as over-the-top.

Overall, Christy is a film that certainly had plenty of promise going for it, centered around an inspirational sports figure who defied all odds and went up against terrible circumstances. The final product should have done more justice to what she had gone through, the abuse she endured, and how she became a role model for other women at the time. Instead, it is merely another paint-by-numbers biopic that plays it too safe.

still courtesy of Elevation Pictures

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Jasmine Graham