Starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte. Rated PG.

Where The Fighter stuck mostly to a light-touch retro feel for its tale of two battling brothers, Warrior raises the stakes on almost every possible level and offers two powerhouse leads.

Tom Hardy, a U.K. actor with a Javier Bardem scowl and a pretty good Rust Belt accent, dominates the screen as Tommy, the more brutish of Pennsylvania’s Conlon boys. Aussie Joel Edgerton (ditto on the accent) is the slightly older Brendan, who has lifted himself from semi-pro wrestling to become a popular high-school physics teacher. He’s happily married, with children (Jennifer Morrison doesn’t make much impression as his put-upon wife), but medical and mortgage payments push him back into brawling for dollars.

Tommy has returned from parts unknown to bunk uneasily with the siblings’ father, Paddy, played by Nick Nolte with the assurance of a man well within reach of an Oscar for best supporting actor. We gradually learn just how bad a dad ol’ Paddy was back when he was on the juice and abusing his late wife. Even so, it’s not totally clear what’s driving Tommy to enter the ring for a brutal tournament of mixed martial arts. But we can be sure (cue the Beethoven) that Brendan will meet him there.

Gavin O’Connor (Pride and Glory)—who wrote the script with two others and plays the entrepreneur behind the MMA event in Atlantic City—skips the flashback approach, so the film’s 140 minutes are filled with talk, or glowering nontalk, between the Conlons—when they’re not beating the bejesus out of each other or whoever else gets in the way.

The well-crafted tale is admirably serious, although its constant surge of conflict and violent resolution grows wearying. There’s a message here about how America is eating its own, but somehow it’s still easier to hiss at some other guy with a hammer and sickle on his boxing trunks.