Directed by:
Craig GillespieScreenplay:
Steven RogersCinematography:
Nicolas KarakatsanisComposer:
Peter NashelCast:
Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, Bobby Cannavale, Mckenna Grace, Bojana Novakovic, Caitlin Carver (more)VOD (5)
Plots(1)
A darkly comedic tale of American figure skater, Tonya Harding, and one of the most sensational scandals in sports history. Though Harding was the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition, her legacy was forever defined by her association with an infamous, ill-conceived, and even more poorly executed attack on fellow Olympic competitor Nancy Kerrigan. (Roadshow Entertainment)
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Reviews (10)
The true face of America. I, Tonya skates along the borders between drama and comedy, but there is more truth in her story than it seems at first glance. A comedy about simple rednecks slips into a cruel family drama at unexpected moments and works with truth as it suits (parrot on the coat, shooting at the husband). The acting is super in all cases (particularly the mom is priceless), but Margot is plain fantastic and I think she deserves an Oscar. The American Dream inside out. I think that you really should kill yourself.
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Quite an interesting story of Tonya Harding, and the only reason I watched the film is because I like sports dramas where the underdog kicks everyone’s asses. The opening met my expectations and I wanted to praise the excellent Tilda Swinton as the mother, but now I realise it was actually Allison Janney, well never mind she was perfect and to remove her after half an hour is a reprehensible mistake. That's like someone removing J.K. Simmons from Whiplash, without him the film definitely wouldn't have gotten the recognition it has now. As for Tonya herself, unfortunately there's not much skating, the rivalry is mostly nonexistent and she performs the same tricks over and over. The film focuses more on her personal life and her relationship with her husband, which at times was reminiscent of The War of the Roses, but I wasn't really interested in that. Pros: Margot Robbie and Allison Janney both solid, an interesting story. Cons: slow pace, humour only in the first 30 minutes then absent, lack of skating and o an intense finale like in Borg vs. McEnroe, for example. 6/10.
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As excellent as the performances are, the true star of the film is Gillespie, the director, who managed put together a boisterous story with motivations that cannot be fully understood and where you don’t really have anyone to root for due to the moral ugliness of all the characters, and he did it in such an energetic and coherent way, comparable to Martin Scorsese at his best. I can’t remember any other film where I enjoyed so much the retrospective structure supplemented by the narration of the participants, all complemented with “Soderbergh-like” breaks in the shape of the remarkable soundtrack, on which the staging of many scenes depends, or the sudden time jumps for the sake of more striking twists. Under this barrage of great ideas and interesting (though awful) characters, it almost doesn’t matter than the runtime could have been shorter and the secondary plots better resolved. A welcome breath of fresh air to the stereotypic Academy shelves, it’s a pity that Margot didn’t get there, too.
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Yeah, I remember the controversy around Tonya Harding, but it was interesting to see the story background. Based on the title of the film, I was expecting a drama about how some athletes will do anything to participate in the Olympics. The story was weirdly fragmented, though, as if the filmmakers wanted to handle multiple themes at once, not fully focusing on any one of them. Despite some reservations, I was intrigued by the film, Shawn and his boys took care of the laughs, and I particularly enjoyed the mother-daughter relationship portrayed by Allison Janney and Margot Robbie.
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On a purely emotional level, Margot Robbie should have won an Oscar for this wild parade of domestic violence, 90s fashion, crazy bangs, a boorish family background and figure skating, because there's hardly a character in the last year that has had such a broad appeal and reflected society so well, as well as the values of will, hard work, life's victories, losses and realising your dream, no matter how self-typical. She downright steals some scenes, such as the one at the courthouse at the end, overshadowing not only the other actors but also the otherwise excellent technical ensemble. I,Tonya is also on the same level as Titanic or the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one respect, the visual effects serve as a means of supporting the story, not as mere eye-candy. At the same time, they are hardly visible at all and the ice-skating scenes are filmed fantastically, yet unspectacularly, so not everyone notices. It's not a great film, but for the first time in a long time a story of the rise and fall of a person in an antipathetic way with very peculiar, harsh humour.
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