The Wrestler is essentially the story of ’80s wrestling superstar Jake”The Snake Roberts”. If you’ve seen the documentary Beyond The Mat, (if you haven’t, you should), Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s story will sound very familiar. Back in the ’80s at the height of professional wrestling, The Ram was on top of the world. Bigger than Hogan, if Hogan existed in the reality of this movie. He held the spotlight and probably never thought it would end. It’s a common problem with professional wrestlers. They never know when to retire. Some of them can prolong it successfully, such as Hogan or Ric Flair. Others, like Jake the Snake, Rick Rude, Mr. Perfect, and countless others, either die early or struggle to perform in front of 100 people, but continue to do so because it’s all they know. The Wrestler captures that feeling perfectly, and it’s heartbreaking. The Ram is washed up, putting his body on the line for 60 bucks a show, but he still garners respect in the small dressing rooms of house shows and that’s all he needs.

There’s a meticulous attention to detail about the wrestling that makes this movie 100% believable. I was a hardcore wrestling fan until 2002 (merger of WWF/WCW) and to say I was obsessed would be a gross miscalculation. Wrestling fans don’t get a lot of movies based around their sport, and when they do, it’s a marketing scam like Ready To Rumble. But we finally get our Spider-Man of wrestling. A movie that respects the genre and treats it correctly. The Ram headlining a house show in a gymnasium filled to capacity with 120 people. The “inside” look at wrestling, down to the choreography of the matches and the in-ring chatter. It’s all very authentic and pulls you into this insane world where a man will subject his body to thumb tacks, barbed wire, broken glass, and staple guns just to hear the applause of a handful of people.

The only complaint about realism I have is that The Ram pulls off ridiculous moves for a heavyweight, especially at his age. Ever see Hogan do a hurricarana? How about a frog splash? With moves like that, you wonder why The Ram wasn’t brought back to the big leagues. As the movie progresses, you realize even if he had the chance, he’d probably screw it up.

But enough about the wrestling.

Hit that there jump to read the rest of the review.

The Wrestler is driven by Mickey Rourke’s performance. He’s in every scene, slowly building his character’s tragedy throughout the movie, as Aronofsky loves to do. He’s a man whose career is at an end, and it just so happens that his career means everything to him. Halfway through the movie, The Ram suffers a heart attack after the aforementioned thumb tack/staple gun debacle. He’s forced to retire after a triple bypass. It’s at this point things begin to unravel for him. Now that he’s broken down, out of the spotlight, craving any sort of attention, he turns to his personal life only to find a daughter who hates him. Rourke nails the wrestling attitude, but also digs at the layers underneath; a man who knows he’s good for nothing else but throwing faces into exposed turnbuckles. He’ll never be a good father. Even when he makes progress, he finds a way to screw it up.

There’s a great scene where he’s working the deli counter at a grocery store, and the camera follows him exactly as it did before he steps out of the curtain at a wrestling match. He then works the deli customers until he gets a pop. He lives for the pop, even if it’s one person. It also explains why he takes all that punishment for such small audiences. Just one person.

The Ram’s love interest is played by Marisa Tomei, on a nudity hot streak as of late. She’s a stripper with a son and doesn’t want to get involved with customers, but Mickey Rourke is too damn charming for her to resist. She represents a choice for him at the movie’s climax and she’s important to his development. When The Ram hits a breaking point, he decides to return to the ring for one last match despite the the fact that he could die. Without wrestling, he’s truly lost. The only thing he lives for is being in that ring. And ultimately, he must make a choice between the real world and the wrestling ring. Mortality or immortality.

This is a small movie that will get a lot of attention for Rourke’s performance, and deservedly so. He is Randy “The Ram” Robinson, and despite his, um, unique face, he disappears into the role. If anyone is turned off the wrestling aspect, don’t be. This is a very personal movie, it just so happens to take place in a very hazardous work environment.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 10:10 am and is filed under Film, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.