Mickey Rourke the Wrestler both make comebacks!

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2009)

Who would have thought that washed up and notorious Mickey Rourke would be the front-runner for an Academy Award for playing Randy Ram Robinson, a veteran professional wrestler and celebrity in the wrestling entertainment world. First, I am not a wrestling fan in the least and this film shows the bruises, damage, and the non glorious side of the sport. Rourke is beautiful as the bruised, damaged self-proclaimed "piece of meat." The beginning of the film shows him as the washed up Ram after an appearance and his life where he lives alone in a trailer park where he hasn't paid his rent. He works days at the Acme supermarket and nights where he goes to a strip club and befriends Cassidy played by Marisa Tomei. If people thought her first Oscar win was a shock, she should get her second Academy Award for this performance as the stripper and single mom who wins Ram's heart. Ram has a daughter, Stephanie, played well by Evan Rachel Wood but her character never is fleshed out as more than just his lesbian daughter living with her girlfriend but it's never said. He just suspects and we don't know much about Stephanie's history in the first place. We don't have that connection between them which would help explain their wounded relationship. Maybe Stephanie is more her father's daughter than she pretends not to be. I didn't like the ending but I won't spoil it for anybody else except that it's not clear. Regardless, the film was shot on a very low budget but it's still inspiring and Mickey Rourke's performance is well alone worth the effort in watching him despite the pain and blood that comes with wrestling. If you didn't have any respect for wrestlers or strippers before the film, the film will make you look at wrestlers and strippers a little differently. Tomei's character, Cassidy, shows a different side of a stripper about aging in a profession where they don't want you too and where you're nothing but a piece of meat. In reality, Cassidy and Ram can both share in professions where they use their bodies. For both, it is not only a way of life but a living. For Cassidy and others in the profession, they make more money than working as secretaries in reality. Ram's whole life is wrestling. If you take that away from him, you take away his life's meaning.