With conflicting unreliable narrators in present-day interviews that were recreated and imagined from real transcripts, screenwriter Steven Rogers structures Tonya Harding’s story in a fractured way that presents every side and perception of the sensationalistic story, including the point-of-view of a "Hard Copy" journalist (Bobby Cannavale), but ultimately lets audiences decide for themselves. Tonya was aware of Jeff and Shawn’s original plan, but even if she wasn't physically involved in Nancy's injury, she may as well have been as this off-the-rink scandal would lead to the end of her career from being banned for life from the Ice Skating Association.īased on “irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews," “I, Tonya” sets out to reveal with an irreverent framing device how skewed the truth of certain events can be when told from person to person. Jeff and his bumbling friend and Tonya’s “bodyguard,” Shawn Eckardt (Paul Walter Hauser), who saw himself as a secret agent, had set out to just mail death threats to Nancy, but Shawn ended up hiring a couple of “hit men” who would send a severe message but forget to cover their tracks. And then, everything changed on Januwith “The Incident,” an orchestrated knee-clubbing attack on Tonya's competitor Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver) after a practice at the U.S. Figure Skating Championship and became the first woman to complete a triple axel at 19 years old. Jeff and Tonya got married anyway, and then in 1991, Tonya won the U.S. Once she was old enough to date (yet not old enough to go on a date without the accompaniment of LaVona), Tonya fell for the mustachioed Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) with whom she would share a codependent and ultimately destructive on-again, off-again, on-again relationship. As a child and into her teenage years, she received verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her mother. It was her perpetually soused, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed and abusive mother, LaVona (Allison Janney), who forced skating instructor Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson) to take on Tonya as a student, and at only 4 years old, she won her first competition. Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) was born to skate. Fortunately, the filmmakers have more interest in making Tonya a flawed yet empathetic human being divided from the rest of her competitors by class and presentation, with a never-better performance from Margot Robbie, and crafting what might just be the last word in this particular tabloid story. It chronicles the figure skater’s fame and fall from grace, sure, but “I, Tonya” is more of a brash, blisteringly funny and just plain sad tragicomedy, a slice of lurid pop culture history that unfortunately turned Tonya Harding into tabloid fodder, dubbing her a punchline and a villain. ![]() ![]() ![]() As written by Steven Rogers (2015’s “Love the Coopers”) and directed by Craig Gillespie (2016’s “The Finest Hours”), the film is anything but a stodgy, superficial, paint-by-numbers biopic. It not only makes one think about Tonya Harding again, but it makes one care and reconsider her in a different light. “I, Tonya” is the clear-eyed cinematic portrait of former competitive figure skater Tonya Harding that you probably didn't think you needed.
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