As award season is now upon us, one of the movies that is getting a lot of buzz is I, Tonya. I, Tonya features Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan in the leading roles of Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly. The film also features Allison Janney as LaVona Golden, Tonya’s mother, and Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn, Tonya’s bodyguard and Jeff’s friend.

I, Tonya tells the life story of the Olympic figure skater, Tonya Harding, going into great detail about her rough childhood, her abusive relationship with ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, and the rise and fall of her career. Harding was the first woman to land a triple axel in competition, but her accomplishments were often overshadowed by the infamous attack on Nancy Kerrigan in which Kerrigan’s knee was bashed with a metal pole, the plan put in place by Harding’s ex husband.

Although she was not directly involved in the attack, Harding to this day is associated with it, forever ruining her reputation and career. Although it is touched on within the film, the main focus is showing audiences everywhere that there is more to Harding than the attack, and that there are two sides to every story.

I thought that I, Tonya was a great film, and portrayed Tonya Harding in a positive light for the first time in many years. I, Tonya was effective in showing that Harding has much more depth to her as a person than the media portrays. The film makes its viewers feel sympathy toward Harding as she is depicted in a miserable childhood and abusive relationship with Gillooly graphically showing the extent of physical and verbal abuse that she faced in both cases. With that being said, the film is shocking at times as I did not know that Harding’s life was so difficult. Another case in which I felt sympathy toward Harding is after the Kerrigan attack as the film shows that she had little involvement, but her dreams were still ripped away from her as she was banned from skating.

I would like to applaud all of the phenomenal acting in the film, namely Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan. Robbie shows her versatility as an actor as she took on the tough role of accurately portraying Harding. The role demanded her to be screaming one minute, and then crying the next. Stan also does a great job of portraying Gillooly’s psychotic demeanor as he is depicted as screaming, abusing, and manipulating Harding for the majority of the movie. I personally have met Stan at Comic Con in 2016, and he was very nice, so it must have taken a lot of effort for him to be able to channel the crazy of Gillooly accurately.

Overall, the accurate portrayal of Harding’s story, and the acting within the film, is phenomenal; I, Tonya is worthy of all of the hype it is receiving.