Touching heartbreaking and funny expose of wrestling

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2009)

Once a big star in the 80's, Randy 'The Ram' Robinson is now just a washed up wrestler trying to make a few bucks, he lives on past glories and selling his autographed merchandise at wrestling conventions. All he wants is a few beers and a woman to share his life, one woman in particular is Cassidy a local lap dancer who he has befriended, but she's not interested as she has her own problems to deal with. With the promise of a big rematch with another star from the 80's, Ram goes into training, with a little extra pharmaceutical help he hopes to make a quick killing, but tragedy strikes and he has a heart attack, which requires him to have a heart bypass, his career over and his life on a string he makes a fresh plea for love from Cassidy and also aims to regain the trust of his daughter he abandoned many years previously.
Yes indeed, Rourke is as good in this as they say he is, he goes through all the emotions in this roller coaster of a tale and comes out the other side with perhaps the best performance of his career. His body is toned and the amount of work he must have had yo put in for the wrestling scenes must have truly phenomenal. Filmed in a fly on the wall type documentary style, The Wrestler is a fine expose on the lives of wrestlers, there's some entertaining exposition before fights as they discuss their moves and who is going to win, yes, who knew the fights were fixed? There's a suitably tense finale, to find out if Ram can find the happiness he craves, or will it all end in tears? On a side note Marisa Tomei as a 44 yr old stripper, Man what a body!