An encyclopedia of fight-movie family-saga redemption-story cliches

"Warrior" tries really hard to be a great movies and strikes many of the same notes that have worked for the several successful films that have linked personal combat with family drama: Million Dollar Baby, The Fighter, The Wrestler, to name some recent ones - but the problem is that Warrior comes off as a encyclopedia of movie cliches. Though I was with it for a while, quite interested in the mixed-martial arts and ultimate fighting that the film establishes as its milieu, by the end the only real enjoyment in the movie was to try to predict what the characters would do in the next scene - not hard to do, by the way. Movies is a drama of conflict between alcoholic father on the mend once a great Marine and fight trainer and his two estranged sons, one a kind of bad boy with a mysterious past - he has been absent for about 13 years - and the other a good boy who's now a physics teacher and a father of 2 girls. totally improbably, the teacher loses his job (because he did smoker fight outside a bar - what? he has no contract and no union?) and takes up fighting to pay the mortgage (heartless banker will take house away - hasn't he seen It's a Wonderful Life?); other brother, equally improbably, asks dad to coach him - as both brothers enter a $5-million tournament. Can you guess that they will meet in the final? That Dad will come around? That the skeptical wife will show up to cheer? That the high-school principal will join the students in cheering on their favorite teacher? That the "bad brother" was actually a Marine hero? You couldn't guess? Anyway, despite some total wierdnesses, such as one of the trainer/coaches insists his fighter listen to Beethoven! - the fighting scenes are pretty good and Nick Nolte (the Dad) makes every movie he's in a little better - but in this case, not better enough.