Worth seeing for the performances

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2009)

Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" employs a pleasingly stripped-down visual look and uses plenty of hand-held camera (not the shaky variety), but this also comes off as forced and predictable, a calculated measure more than a natural stylistic choice. It's suitable for the small-scale drama which "The Wrestler" is, but nothing remarkable, although it doesn't really need to be. Similarly, the script offers an interesting lead character and takes us through a short period in his life, and briefly examines his relationship with his daughter and with a stripper and single mother he is romantically interested in. By the end of the film, you really feel like you have seen a fairly interesting and important part of this man's life, but it didn't feel to me like a complete emotional journey. It barely felt deserving of a film. This is basically a film which shows us a man going through, for most of its running time, what millions and millions of men in the United States must experience on a daily basis. Furthermore, there is nothing especially entertaining, especially remarkable, especially notable about this man except for him having been famous at one point. I read through reviews of "The Wrestler" and I wonder if the people writing about the film saw something entirely different to what I saw, a nice little low-key drama, but that's all, a competently-written low-key drama with no tidy resolutions and a sense of emotional ambiguity. The final shot and the speech preceding it are supposed to inspire emotion, but I was more emotionally invested in what played right after: Bruce Springsteen's excellent new song "The Wrestler". This is not a bad film by any means, nor a particularly notable or interesting one, and I'm a little baffled by the praise for the film itself. With a lesser cast this would have been a middling, pointless affair, but it's made worthwhile by Mickey Rourke's wonderfully understated and believable performance (which, I do have to say, is a little over-hyped as well, and nothing compared to my favorite couple of performances of the year, including a similar portrayal of a somewhat similar character- Jean Claude Van-Damme as himself in "JCVD"). Marisa Tomei is superb as well, every scene she's in is packed with genuine emotion, and Evan Rachel Wood is wasted, although she's fine in her few scenes. "The Wrestler" is a film driven by its performances, and ultimately worth seeing for them alone, but nothing else about it achieves excellence.