“The Social Network,’’ the drama about the founding of Facebook at Harvard, won the top awards at the Boston Society of Film Critics’ annual meeting. The film capped a big year for Boston in the movies. “The Fighter,’’ which opened last week, is set in Lowell, stars Mark Wahlberg as the boxer Mickey Ward, and tells the story of Ward’s large, rambunctious family. It won the ensemble-acting award. Christian Bale was named the best supporting actor for playing Ward’s wild, crack-addicted, former- boxer brother, Dicky Eklund. Melissa Leo, who plays the boxers’ mother, Alice, was a runner-up in the supporting actress category.

Even in limited release, “The Fighter’’ packed a serious punch at the box office over the weekend. Director David O. Russell’s movie starring Mark Wahlberg as Lowell-bred brawler “Irish’’ Micky Ward and Christian Bale as Micky’s half-brother Dicky Eklund grossed $320,000 in just four theaters. “The Fighter’’ opens in 2,200 screens Friday and is already being mentioned as an Oscar contender, primarily for the performances of Bale and Melissa Leo, who plays Micky and Dicky’s mom, Alice Ward.

Sticking fairly closely to the facts of Mr. Ward’s story, “The Fighter” plants itself firmly in his native terrain of Lowell, Mass., immersing the viewer in the sensorium of a hard-luck industrial town left to languish in the backwash of globalization. You can almost smell the weariness and desperation rising off of the tar that Micky, in his day job as a road paver, spreads on streets lined with sagging three-decker houses and faded storefronts. A city with a distinguished place in American labor and literary history — it was the birthplace of Jack Kerouac — Lowell in the early 1990s, when “The Fighter” unfolds, is blighted by poverty, unemployment and the crack epidemic, which has claimed Micky’s half brother, Dicky Eklund, as a casualty. Christian Bale’s performance as Mr. Eklund is astonishing. Mr. Wahlberg gives a brilliantly quiet performance, underplaying so gracefully and with so little vanity that you almost forget that the movie is supposed to be about Micky.

Dicky Eklund should be dead. At least that’s what Boston Police Department Commissioner Edward F. Davis thought the night the Lowell welterweight came flying out a third-floor window during a drug bust at a crack den. That’s why Davis reserved a ticket days ago to see “The Fighter,” which hit theaters yesterday. It’s a movie that goes right to his Mill City roots.

Wahlberg was joined on the red carpet by friends from his Dorchester ’hood, his mother Alma, who called her son’s success “surreal,’’ and brothers Jimmy and Bob.

“The Fighter” premiere at the Hingham Shipyard last night was a TKO with star Mark Wahlberg, director David O. Russell and a bunch of Boston boldfacers snagging ring-side seats.

“The Fighter’’ steeps us in the grit of its time and place — Lowell, Mass., in the 1990s — and electrifyingly dramatizes Ward’s battles with the family that almost loved him to death.

For David O. Russell’s latest film, “The Fighter,” a passion project brought to him by his frequent star Mark Wahlberg, Mr. Russell takes on the true story of Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, brothers and struggling boxers from Lowell, Mass., near where Mr. Wahlberg grew up. He plays Micky, the quieter but more successful of the two, and Christian Bale, in an outsize, twitchy performance that is generating Oscar talk, plays Dicky, a recovering drug addict and a wiry charmer.

A pandemonium of Massachusetts accents, the film is set in large part in working-class Lowell, the epicenter of the American Industrial Revolution -turned-1990s wilderness of triple-deckers packed with dysfunctional families of all stripes.

“The Fighter’’ premiered in LA last night and walking the red carpet with all the Hollywood heavies was Erica McDermott, the 36-year-old Scituate mom who plays one of Micky Ward’s seven sisters.

The National Board of Review, an organization of more than 100 film critics and historians, has picked the made-in-Cambridge Facebook flick “The Social Network” as its top movie of the year.

Wahlberg has wanted to do a boxing film for a long time now. He says he’s been training for 4 1/2 years. That meant up to eight hours a day in the gym and in the ring he built in his backyard for an earlier boxing movie that fell through.

Dickie Eklund, the half-brother and trainer of Lowell slugger “Irish” Micky Ward, was once famous for fighting “Sugar” Ray Leonard and being the first to knock him down. Then came drugs and prison as fame took a dark turn. But no matter his transgressions, Eklund is known as one of the toughest boxers the Mill City — home to the annual New England Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions — ever produced.

Christian Bale has played real-life figures before, but in the effusive Mr. Eklund, Mr. Bale had for the first time a living, breathing model before his eyes, and one with highly distinctive mannerisms and speech patterns to boot. Mr. Eklund showed Mr. Bale around his old haunts in Lowell, while the actor took notes and recorded conversations. Mr. Russell pointed out that Mr. Bale’s task involved far more than mimicry. “Dicky has a whole rhythm to him, a music,” he said. “Christian had to understand how his mind works.”

You can talk about world championships and gaudy leather and diamond-encrusted belts all you want, but if you hit someone in the face for pay while trying to avoid him returning the favor, you want to get well paid for it. For most of his 17-year career, Micky Ward wasn’t, which is what has made his life a movie and why a movie has been made about his life, or at least the portion of it that ended on March 11, 2000, the night he won the World Boxing Union light welterweight (140 pound) title from a Brit from Merseyside, Liverpool, named Shea Neary.

Lowell’s Rich Farrell, 52, has a cameo acting role in “The Fighter” — as documentary filmmaker Rich Farrell. But his life may soon get marquee treatment as his autobiography, “What’s Left of Us,” has been optioned by the film’s producers.

Looks like the low-budget, indie film “Fairhaven’’ is on its way. The movie, which is being helmed by Medford native Tom O’Brien, will start pre-production next week. Shooting will begin in January, which means that stars Rosemarie DeWitt (of “Mad Men’’ and the soon-to-be-released Boston film “The Company Men’’), Chris Messina (of “Julie & Julia’’), and Brad William Henke (of “Lost’’) will soon be around town.

Roll out the red carpet. Lowell has landed a premiere showing of the highly anticipated Micky Ward biopic The Fighter on Thursday, Dec. 9th, one day before the movie hits theaters nationwide. The premiere will take place at Showcase Cinemas at 7:30 p.m. A reception will be held before the screening at the Courtyard by Marriott, 30 Industrial Avenue East, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Proceeds from the reception will benefit Team Micky Ward Charities and the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau.