Rourke, Tomei and Aronofsky have crafted a must-see.

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2009)

Good acting requires good actors. Great acting requires great characters. A brief glance at any of cinemas greatest performances shows you that the quality of the character fuels the quality of the performance. Travis Bickle, Daniel Plainview, Lester Burnham and many others were all brilliantly brought to life, but there was something about them which was inherently attractive or intriguing which gripped the audience.
So it is with Randy "The Ram" Robinson, the beating heart of Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler". This character is a brilliant piece of writing (hats off to the film's scribe, Robert D. Siegel). The first half hour is dedicated to his persona, "The Ram"; a quiet and much loved man backstage who becomes a loud and showy beast in the ring. But, when the wrestling subsides, we discover Randy Robinson (aka Randy Ramsinski), a charming but lonely man who treats himself pretty badly and finds himself to be "an old broken down piece of meat".
All sides of the eponymous character are brilliantly brought to life by Mickey Rourke, who creates a man who is sympathetic and engaging. He is also deeply flawed, as he craves and seeks a life outside of the ring but can only find happiness inside of it. Rourke's performance will make you love Randy, support him, cheer him on, but above all, come the end, you will be pleading with him, like all of the other characters around him, to stop.
The towering presence in the middle of the film is ably supported by Marisa Tomei. Tomei, as the stripper "Cassidy", who has the closest relationship with Randy of anyone in the whole film, is at her very best here. With this film being Rourke's "comeback", she could have ended up being ignored, but she more than holds her own and doesn't quite let Rourke run off with the film.
Another "comeback", of sorts, is from Darren Aronofsky. The failure of "The Fountain" will be all but forgotten after this solid piece of work which slowly builds up the tension and emotion and becomes a really gripping and enthralling film. He doesn't shy away from the violence and pain of the wrestling (yes it's fixed, but the people really do get hurt) but at no point do you feel that you're being asked to enjoy it, but the film's best moments are the quieter ones.
The end is a spine-tingling, ambiguous, final blast which will leave you thrilled. The melancholy of the final moments is a result of the fine craftsmanship of Siegel, Aronofsky, Tomei and Rourke. This is a film driven by character and emotion and, although you may feel that you've seen this story before at points, this is more than a simple drama. This is a brilliant, surprising, gripping and beautifully executed story.