Beyond the mat

Rating: 6/10 (5 November 2014)

Mickey Rourke always talked a good film role although a lot of his films were all hype and little by way of substance and entertainment value. Just try watching The Pope of Greenwich Village!
However after a few lean years with a detour into boxing and plenty of bad plastic surgery he gets a role to shine in with The Wrestler. He plays washed up, over the hill Randy Robinson known as The Ram. He was big in the late 1980s very much in the ilk of real wrestlers such as the Ultimate Warrior, he even had a video console game after him.
Although we are not told why times are rough and where his money went, he is now living in a trailer park, behind on his payments, working in a warehouse and in the weekends also working at the lower rungs of wrestling with other over the hill stars and some up and coming talent. Faraway from the world of arenas that he strutted a few decades earlier.
I assume his money went on wine, women, drugs and the good life. He is distant from his daughter who he abandoned when she was a kid and now spends his time in a strip club where he is friendly with Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) although she is not his girlfriend.
After a rough wrestling match he has a heart attack, he manages to get close with his daughter but he can never gel with her or Cassidy and with ailing health The Ram goes for a big pay wrestling match. He realises that the ring and the crowds is a life that he is comfortable with and at least gives him dignity.
It is interesting that in many ways The Ram is a nice guy. He is friendly to the kids in the trailer park, he gets on well with fellow wrestlers, he is tender with Cassidy and wants just to have good relationship with his daughter. He seems to have no obvious traits such as alcoholism, drugs, gambling etc. He does takes steroids, he goes to strip clubs. We only see him lose his temper when someone at the store recognised him when he was working behind the meat counter and he felt embarrassed.
Darren Aronofsky directs the film in a hand-held documentary style. It is low budget but he lets his three leads do the talking with their acting. Tomei comes off the best and is striking as the tattooed stripper, who is also commercially minded. She needs money for a better lifestyle. Even the guys playing wrestlers are good at their roles.
Mickey Rourke bulked up for this picture. He admits he juiced up to get so big so quickly. This was another shot at the big time and he got a deserved Oscar nomination, although I think Sean Penn was better in Milk.
This is a character study, a slow burn film, maybe at the end of the day it does not amount to much apart from a look at a character at the downside of his life.