Director: Darren Aronofsky
Genre: Drama/Sport
Year: 2008
I will start with an honest statement: This is my least favorite of Darren Aronofsky’s movies. I will follow that up with a second honest statement: This movie is great!
With the likes of Wong Kar-wai, Danny Boyle, Kim Ki-duk and Guillermo del Toro, Aronofsky is simply one of the best directors of our time and I say that with no reservations; one look at his films, any of his films from his obscure Pi, to Requiem for a Dream, to the abstractly beautiful The Fountain to….this!
The Wrestler is a film about Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke; Domino, Sin City), a once famous wrestler in the twilight of his career when he suffers from a potentially career ending heart attack. It is an eye opening moment that forces the man, who often ends up sleeping in his van due to lack of rent money, to re-examine the direction of his life and make amends with important people in his past and important people in the present that could lead to a future that – as the film unfolds – proves more and more intangible.
Though the movie is set in a sport that I only lightly flirted with during with earlier years as far as fanaticism goes, and deals with people on the edge of society, the message that this film carries is truly universal and applicable to a number of people in a number of professions. It brings to the forefront the numerous challenges a person is bound to find and the importance of knowing how to deal with them.
Mickery Rourke is at his best in this film, bringing a credibility to this character that is disturbingly real, to the point that at times you feel like smacking him on the head for being so stupid, and all the while, you are telling yourself that you know someone like that, and that the choices he is making, the mistakes he is making, are probably choices and mistakes you yourself have made. In his performance for this film, Rourke reaches in and draws something out of all of us and creates a connection that regardless of how distanced you might be from the subject matter, the significance is not lost.
Supported by Marisa Tomei (Before the Devil Knows You are Dead, In the Bedroom), who plays a stripper dealing with her own life and struggles, competing in a field where youth and looks are all important; and Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe, King of California) who plays Stephanie, his abandoned daughter caught in the tidal wave of emotion of having her disappeared father suddenly pop into her life – this film has three solid performances that rocket this film above and beyond most films of 2008 and paired with a superb script, well, it explains all the nominations and the hype this film received and rightfully so.
Rating: 
Comment: Strong language. Adult situations. Brief nudity, mostly topless (at strip clubs), along with a semi-graphic sexual scene. And then…of course, the violence, which if you are familiar to the world of wrestling, then you are pretty aware of how graphic that can be.
Quote: Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson: When you live hard and you play hard and burn the candle at both ends… in this life, you can lose everything you love, everything that loves you. A lot of people told me that I’d never wrestle again, they said “he’s washed up”, “he’s finished” , “he’s a loser”, “he’s all through”. You know what? The only ones gonna tell me when I’m through doing my thing, is you people here. You people here… you people here. You’re my family.
