Great Story Strange Amounts of Realism

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2009)

I thought the down and out fighter character was done with. So imagine my surprise when this film becomes one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2008. Why is this film such a success? Well, I don't agree with all of the reasons why.
Let's address the film will probably be known for in a couple years, I mean the "Return of Mickey Rourke." Now, I've never been that much of a Mickey Rourke fan but apparently his early work is good and he gives the rawest performance you've ever seen. But I did like him in Sin City as Marv because Marv was a character. I thought he had a character in Sin City and in the Wrestler he's really just playing himself.
He does a lot of stunts, get's hurt bad and makes a heart attack look very real but the entire time I'm thinking, "Did Mickey Rourke go through all of this himself at one point in his life?" I Wiki'd up some info on Mickey Rourke cause I was curious about his acting career. It turns out that he was popular in the 1980's, got a lot of props from fans and critics, was seen as a sex symbol, then because he couldn't make it in the acting world he decided to become a boxer. When that didn't work he came back to acting and is career is now seen as a comeback. Now, if you go and see the movie, you'll realize that THIS IS THE SAME STORY. Like, almost verbatim. Rourke's character plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson who was very popular in the 1980's, got a lot of affection from fans, Randy was seen as a sex symbol (that one isn't true), but in the film he has a few rough patches that involve his medical condition and in the end he has to quit the thing that he loves, only to return to it after everyone has said that he's washed up. Again, very similar.
So, how great is his acting? Well, there's no character, because it's just Mickey Rourke. You can say that he's using his own personal experiences to bring a performance that is very close to home, but the thing is, it's way to close to home. It would be like me saying I was acting if Charlie Kaufman made character for me, who was ashamed of himself, used humor as a defense, continued to be awkward with women, not that attractive, and was unsure of where -if anywhere- he was going. If he made that character for me, I would "act" out that part until it bled but, thing is, that's who I am. Mickey Rourke is Randy "The Ram" Robinson and because he is that character along with the fact that there really wasn't any character at all in the film, JUST Mickey Rourke I'm hesitant to say that he knocks the character out of the park. He does in a way, but it's almost like he does it with ease because he's lived it.
Moving on from the complicated of nature of Mickey Rourke performance, I would like to talk about the story of The Wrestler. As I stated earlier this story has been done before and to death. What makes this film different from Raging Bull, the Rocky movies, and other up and coming sports movies is the fact that it's not that he's lost too many matches, it's just that Randy is old. The whole movie is about how you only have the spot light for a certain amount of time and what do you do when you have to give it up. Randy is left with a choice, he can leave the spot light and be stuck in a world where everything he does doesn't work out, or he can stay in a world full of cheering hundreds where everyone knows who he is and everything is planned ahead of time but this world might kill him cause of his age. He's not really a spring chicken anymore. Because of Randy's heart problems he has to give up the life he loves in order to live in a world where nothing goes as planned even though he tries his hardest. Once he realizes that that's a horrible idea he comes back to his old world, full of glory and pain only to realize that everyone he loves is in the real world and can't be there to watch him die in this fantasy world. THE STORY OF THIS MOVIE IS GREAT. Much better than I thought it would be. I remember reading the plot synopsis of it when it hit Cannes and thinking that it sounded a lot like Rocky IV but the fact that this giant thing of a man is actually so fragile it makes emotional teen boys look like Rambo is just a fantastic idea. Which was the films strongest point.
However, one of the weakest points of the film was it's large amount of realism. Now, I was very concerned and interested when I saw the trailer for this film. It looked like Darren Aronofsky really shed his style of small tiny boxes and decided to choose "ultra-hyper-realism." to the point where it's almost a documentary and because of that, the points where nothing is going on are boring as a walking scene in a Gus Van Sant film. The camera work in The Wrestler is this, "follow Mickey Rourke" and I know many different directors would have choked Darren on the spot because that idea is straight out of the "how not to shoot a film correctly" book for dummies. It's boring and while the story was so good the "acting" of Mickey Rourke and the hyper-realism direction the film took just made me think the movie was a lot longer than it actually was. I thought the film was 2 hrs. and 30 min. But it's only an hour and 45. min.