The emperor has no clothes!

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2009)

The Wrestler is an overblown mishmash, saved from utter disaster only by excellent performances from Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomey. For that reason I gave it 5 Stars out of 10 but even 5 Stars was probably too high. Despite a couple of great performances, this gritty, dreary, depressing mess was a failure. Rourke's Wrestler was a quintessential loser, who I could not care about, no matter how I tried. I think I know what Aronofsky, particularly with his, umm, odd ending, had in mind here but, for me at least, it didn't work. Despite brilliant work by Rourke, his character was an unsympathetic goof who failed at every important responsibility he ever had, leaving me nothing and no one to root for.