Christy (2025) review

This underwhelming biopic of the career of former basketball player Christy Salters (Sydney Sweeney) begins with her entering a boxing competition for the heck of it and winning, then being handed over to trainer James V. Martin (Ben Foster) in order to work on her technique - the two of them get married, Christy continues to rack up the wins, but money problems crop up and James becomes so controlling and crazed he stabs and shoots her (she survives, thankfully).  The movie uses a Freudian framework, asserting that Christy's "aggression" (she also regularly calls her opponents a slur) is a projection of her repressed homosexuality - her ex-girlfriend Rosie (Jess Gabor) keeps showing up, irritating James - and whole thing is rather joyless even for the positive moments, like landing a big deal with famed promoter Don King (Chad L. Coleman) or successfully pummeling an opponent.  The intent is to praise a dominant female athlete who helped other women find success in the sport, except the twin forces of a creepy spouse (who pimps her out, videotapes her doing weird things and feeds her cocaine) and her bigoted mother Joyce (Merritt Wever) draw most of the attention.