If you didn’t get enough of brutal ring action and dysfunctional family drama with The Fighter, then Gavin O’Connor’s your man to fill that hole as two former boxers are forced by circumstances to resume their old careers, inevitably ending up facing each other down in the obligatory championship match. The twist here being that they’re estranged brothers and one of them’s being coached by their recovering alcoholic father.

Joel Edgerton’s ex-fighter Brendan Conlon, a Philadelphia husband, father and high school physics teacher whose economic situation is so desperate he’ll lose his home in a month unless he can raise funds. Unbeknown to wife Tess, he’s taking part in amateur cage fights to earn some quick cash. Did I mention one of the kids needs expensive medical care?

Tom Hardy’s his younger brother, Tommy. A marine who’s washed up on hard times and drowning in booze and prescription drugs, he’s also a former boxer. For reasons revealed later, they’ve not seen or spoken to one another in years and the only thing they have in common is that they both hate their father, Paddy (Nick Nolte) for the way he treated their mother. Tommy’s especially bitter, having nursed mom when she was dying.

So, it’s a bit of surprise when he turns up drunk on Paddy’s Pittsburgh doorstep. Even more so when the manager of the MMA pro he floored during a sparring match wants to take him on and Tommy asks his father to train him like he did when he was a teenager. But in a professional rather than paternal relationship.  When a  video of Tommy knocking out the pro hits YouTube it naturally makes him an overnight celebrity, but it also leads to a revelation about his army past and his relationship to a widow in El Paso.

Meanwhile, his teaching job on the line and money running out, Brendan’s hooked up with his old coach and when the MMA fighter he’s grooming for the upcoming $5million prize Atlantic City tournament suffers an injury, there’s no prizes for guessing who steps in to take his place. And anyone with even a passing knowledge of underdog boxing movies will know just where this is leading as the verbal and emotional blows the brothers trade outside the ring become physical ones inside it, bad blood’s spilled and  it all climaxes in a ten knuckle catharsis of rage, revenge and redemption. It’s like Cain and Abel in a cage.

With a few minor wrinkles, it’s all resolutely predictable (perhaps the only cliché not on the fight card is Catholic guilt, though since the Conlons are Irish American, it’s probably implicit) with its metaphors (that’ll be Moby Dick then) and narrative fable writ large. But O’Connor choreographs the emotional punches as powerfully as he does the visceral fight scenes, carving his characters with real flesh and muscle and grounding the story in an honest bedrock of a battered blue collar America and compromised masculinity.

Which is why you’re never given the easy option of rooting for one or other of the brothers, because both are fighting for reasons far beyond mere money and because both are torn up with an equal share of inner demons.

Edgerton and the ever chameleon-like Hardy (as physically imposing here as he was in Bronson) are tremendous both on and off the canvas while Nolte takes a stereotypical broken down, haunted self-loathing wreck of a man and invests him with a bruised heroism. Fans of testosterone fuelled, bone on bone fight movies won’t be disappointed, but it’s the story behind the fists that delivers the knock out.