Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

I, Tonya
2017
**½
Director: Craig Gillespie
Cast: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale, Caitlin Carver, Bojana Novakovic, Paul Walter Hauser

Tonya Harding was a talented figure skater whose successful career ended in a scandal. Before the 1994 Winter Olympics, her ex-husband orchestrated an attack on Nancy Kerrigan, her biggest domestic rival. This darkly comic biopic plays hard and loose with facts. It depicts Tonya as a poor little white trash girl who is abused physically by her husband and mentally by her mother. In the end, nobody seems to be guilty of the attack, it just sort of happens. Tonya's story is probably worth telling, but fictionalising her life and playing her as a victim didn't work for me. Margot Robbie is excellent in the title role, and her scenes on ice are wonderfully created. Allison Janney is disappointingly one-note in her Academy Award winning performance as the mother.