Having spent a lot of time in small Massachusetts towns as a youth, with family members and accents not entirely unlike this cast, the whole thing felt very realistic to me. They caught the tone and mise-en-scene brilliantly. And as a re-creation of the true story of Mickey Ward, whose fights I remember seeing a few of on Wide World of Sports, it felt very honest and un-ornamented. And Christian Bale is fantastically rooted in character, even if the performance is a Big Oscar Performance. But the much hyped "realism" of the fight scenes themselves never delivered, basically one step down from Rocky, with punches thrown a dozen times a round that would have killed any boxer, or at least broken the puncher's hands or wrists. Still, totally worth seeing.