THE WRESTLER Film Critique

Talk about a face only a mother could love.



No one has wrecked themselves quite as seriously as Mickey Rourke. He was once the golden boy – handsome, talented and rising to the top. Then his own self-destructive tendencies took over and ran his career off the rails. He’s a 52-year-old man who most often looks like a 72-year-old man; face and body worn down, voice weathered from years of self-abusive and the hardcore lifestyle. Lately, however, it would seem that he has been on somewhat of a comeback, which seemed to really kick into high gear after his role as Marv in the successful “Sin City”. But, unlike Robert Downey, Jr. who came back and hit the ground running, Rourke has still been waiting in the shadows for just the right role to come along. Enter “The Wrestler”. Never has a film so closely mirrored the rise and fall of its star. Never has one man personified a role so clearly. “The Wrestler” comes to us from director Darren Aronofsky, the visionary filmmaker who brought us the emotional nightmare of “Requiem of A Dream” and then waited six years to bring us the futuristic mind-meld “The Fountain”. This film seems an add choice for the director, but he makes it his own and fits right in with the picture. “The Wrestler” affected me more than I had expected it too. It has an emotional core, carried solely by Mickey Rourke, that resonates. I can’t imagine it not having an affect on an audience.

In the role of his lifetime, Mickey Rourke stars as Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, formerly the professional wrestling golden boy – akin to Hulk Hogan or Ric Flair. He was at the top of his profession for many years, but now finds himself playing the weekend circuit, battered down and destroyed by years of physical abuse. He works at a grocery store during the week scraping together whatever hours he can. He spends his nights at the local strip bar, where a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) listens like no other. He has special feelings for her. And, on the weekends, he wrestles. When Randy suffers a heart attack and is told he cannot wrestle again, he’s thrown into an abyss of uncertainty and confusion. He finds himself alone dealing with a terrifying issue. He eventually decides to reconnect with his daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), who doesn’t like him, and start up a new relationship. He retires from wrestling and tries to turn his life around, but his old ways come creeping up and threaten to derail everything. The film ends with one of the greatest 10-minute stretches of recent memory, the final shot saying what Rourke has been expressing the entire film. Some people cannot change, as hard as they try, and it doesn’t mean they’re bad people – it just means they don’t know any better. I can’t imagine an ending summing up a film any better.

Let’s start with the incredible screenplay from Robert Siegel. You start with a simple premise and expand from there, and that’s what he did here. The film never strays from what the title would imply. It is all about Mickey Rourke and I expect Rourke did most of the heavy lifting himself. The soundtrack, composed of 1980’s hair bands and hard rock groups, says so much about the mentality and the past of this character – a man who is stuck in the 1980’s both mentally and physically. He doesn’t fit in and he doesn’t seem to function in mainstream society. The cinematography is nothing fancy – very basic and affective – a far cry from Aronofsky’s previous work. This is just a very simple film with a very simple premise that breaks your heart wide open. You know you shouldn’t feel sorry for the character because he does everything to himself, but you can’t help it. Rourke is that sympathetic and that brutally innocent that you want to protect him before he breaks. And let me just say that the wrestling sequences are the most authentic I have ever seen captured on film. You really get a sense of how these guys prepare for what they do and you even get some special tricks that wrestlers use that aren’t available to the general public. But we also see wrestling portrayed as a serious and dangerous sport. These men are actors and they are brutes – it is a lot of staging, put people hurt themselvesl; blood is shed, bones are broken and damage is done. You always hear that it’s just pretend, but for these men – it gets very serious and very real sometimes.

I could spend a whole paragraph on Mickey Rourke’s performance – I have already devoted a significant amount of time to it. He is phenomenal, the performance of the year and a true revelation. Mickey Rourke is Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson. It’s like they are one in the same. The scene between Mickey Rourke and Evan Rachel Wood in the abandoned building is one of the most tender moments of his career, and then watching their final scene together just breaks you in two. We’re feeling that pain right along with him and feeling just as devastated as he is. He’s a man with one thing going for him – the sport he loves. When he loses that, he reaches out to his daughter. When he loses her, he has nothing left, which makes the ending so incredible. Marisa Tomei is also just wonderful as the stripper who eventually warms up to ‘The Ram’. She has this quiet sincerity to her on screen that works with each role she takes on. I suspect she’ll get another Oscar nomination for her work here and it’s much deserved. Very few actresses are this comfortable with themselves to do what she does in this film, and adds a nice levity to Mickey Rourke’s character also. Evan Rachel Wood is really only in three scenes in the film, but she is very effective, especially her final scene with Rourke.

I love, love, loved this film. Unlike “Revolutionary Road”, this film did not disappoint in the slightest. It lived up to my high expectations and then some. Mickey Rourke is the most deserving Best Actor contender we’ve had in a long while and it will thrill me if he takes home the gold. What a great year 2008 was, if only to usher the return of two of cinema’s greats – Robert Downey, Jr. and Mickey Rourke. I recommend “The Wrestler” for the following awards: Mickey Rourke for Best Actor, Marisa Tomei for Best Supporting Actress, Robert Siegel for Best Original Screenplay, Darren Aronofsky for Best Director and “The Wrestler” for Best Picture of the year. I have read some negative reviews of this film and I honestly don’t know where in the hell they could come from. I can’t imagine anyone not responding to this material in an honest way. I sincerely hope you all get a chance to see it in theatres and enjoy it with an audience. It’s rare when we get the chance to root for a character like this surrounding my our peers.

Mickey Rourke (Ricky ‘The Ram’ Robinson)
Marisa Tomei (Cassidy)
Evan Rachel Wood (Stephanie Robinson)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

RATED R