Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Craig Gillespie, Roadshow Entertainment.
Cast: Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Bojana Novakovic, Caitlin Carver
Allison Janney justifiably won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for I, Tonya this year. She is the quintessence of what it means to bring a new gristly heart to tenacious love.
She gives an exceptional performance as Harding’s bitingly critical mother, LaVona Golden. Her unadulterated emotionalism is the faultless form of flattery for a sporting underdog movie that contravenes all the regulations.
Based on the unbelievable but true events, this biopic of a disgraced figure skater glides over ice into catastrophe.
Talented figure skater Tonya Harding (portrayed by Robbie) becomes the first American woman to complete a triple axel jump during a competition in 1991. In 1994, a figure skater named Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted just above the knee with a baton.
That’s when Harding’s world comes crashing down after her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastan Stan) conspired to injure Kerrigan (played by Carver), a fellow Olympic hopeful, in a poorly conceived attack that forces the young woman to withdraw from the national championship.
Harding’s life and legacy instantly become stained since she is forever associated with one of the most infamous scandals in sports history.
At the next Olympics, Kerrigan won a silver medal, while Harding was banned from the sport.
Australian actress, Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Legend of Tarzan) is astonishing in the title role. She is also the film’s producer. Robbie is the fiery Harding, who is routinely met with class-based prejudice. From the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in Portland, Oregon, Harding was never fully accepted in the figure skating community for not intrinsically having the appearance of elegance, upbringing and prerogative. Even though she was athletically gifted in the sport.
