Film Gecko

"The Wrestler" - Review

by Jane Boursaw on January 31st, 2009

I saw "The Wrestler" with my 14-year-old son (I don’t recommend it, though – too much sex), and without knowing anything about the storyline, he thought it was a documentary. That’s how good Mickey Rourke is in this role. He’s not just playing a broken down shell of a man who’s all alone. He actually IS that man. So I’m guessing when he thanked his dogs in his Golden Globe speech — "sometimes all a man’s got is his dogs" — he knew what he was talking about.

And watching the movie, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in this role. They couldn’t have cast some pretty boy who’s at the top of his game. It just wouldn’t have been authentic. So … kudos to whomever cast Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler." Well done.

The story follows Rourke’s character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson. He’s an old wrestler who should have retired years ago. But it’s all he knows, so he spends his days doing matches in gym auditoriums for fans who’ve followed him for years.

Randy is beaten and broken down, both emotionally and physically, surviving on a diet of pills and injections, but still spending money to get his long hair bleached and his body tanned. When he’s not getting pummeled in the ring – and I mean pummeled – he hangs out at a seedy strip club and tries to make time with an exotic dancer named Pam a.k.a. Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). She’s trying to move on with her life, and just not sure she wants to get involved with this mess of a guy. But you get the feeling she sees something gentle underneath his grizzled exterior.

Randy also has an estranged daughter, Stephanie, he hasn’t seen in years, played by Evan Rachel Wood. He truly wants to have some sort of relationship with this girl, but his fumbled attempts aren’t helping much.

"The Wrestler" is one of those movies that sucks you in and makes you feel for all these characters. They’re all in rough shape, one way or another. It’s really a character study, more than a movie with a defined plot. The main plot revolves around Randy’s pathetic existence and his relationships, with side-plots involving a heart attack he suffers after a particularly rough match, and a possible re-match with a famed wrestler he took on 20 years ago.

But even though his life is pathetic, he keeps on trying, takes a minimum wage job in a store and ends up working, of all places, in the deli department. I kept telling my son, yeah, I’d love to buy sliced ham and potato salad from this guy.

The R rating is spot on. My son was fine with it, because he’s a budding filmmaker who sees a lot of movies that might be too intense for other kids. But there’s lots of wrestling violence – including several REALLY bloody scenes – and several scenes of nudity in the strip club, as well as one outright sex scene.

In summary, "The Wrestler" is a great character study with all the right actors in their roles and authentic settings. As my son says, it seems like a documentary about a broken down guy, and it sort of is in a way.

The only reason I didn’t give it five geckos is because I thought the ending was kind of a throw-away. It seemed like a commercial ending, and didn’t seem true to the movie.

What about you? Did you like "The Wrestler"? Did the ending seem true to you, and not too commercial?

Images: TM and copyright, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. All Rights Reserved.

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