If you want a preview of just how menacing and muscled up Tom Hardy will be as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises you should see Warrior. Hardy and Joel Edgerton play estranged brothers trained to be mixed martial arts fighters by the father.  Alcoholism, divorce, and years of bad blood have driven the three men apart. Both brothers enter a multi million dollar tournament where the eventually fight each other and confront their past. Edgerton is a retired fighter hoping to win to give his family a better life. Hardy is a Marine haunted by what happened during war and driven by a promise he must keep to a fellow Marine.

  Tom Hardy looks like a hulking, stalking beast in the ring and his dead focus on his opponents is frightening. His character, Tommy, looks inhuman and I couldn’t help but imagine the Bane costume around him at times. Tommy is cold, cruel and efficient in the ring and emotionally raw when he’s out of it.

  It’s one of my favorite movies of 2011. It would easy but not quite accurate to call this the “Rocky” or MMA. It’s raw in the brutal confrontations in and out of the ring. You’ll feel it in the gut, you might cry and you will cheer.

  If you missed the Lionsgate movie in theaters, Warrior is available to buy December 20th.