Will Be Better If You Know Very Little About Wrestling

Rating: 3/10 (11 March 2017)

Being an old-school fan of professional wrestling (I grew up in the WWF's late 1980s-early 90s heyday), I was expecting to thoroughly enjoy this much-hyped film. Instead, I found it to fall quite flat for me for two specific reasons:
First, I think I came into viewing "The Wrestler" with too much prior experience/knowledge of professional wrestling. While the film depicts such unsettling scenes as the locker room drug/steroid deals, the brutal "death matches", and the lonely life that a pro wrestler leads, those were things I already knew, thus I wasn't shocked to see them on screen. Perhaps moviegoers who know nothing about the sinister side of pro wrestling would find those things more horrifying (and thus sympathize with Mickey Rourke's "Randy the Ram" character) than I did.
Secondly, I just wasn't sucked into what was supposed to provide the drama of the film. Randy's relationship with his stripper girlfriend didn't quite lend itself to incredible drama, because it wasn't fleshed-out enough, while his relationship with his estranged daughter flourished a bit too quickly to make the climax of the film as touching as it could have been.
So, although Rourke does turn in an inspired performance, I felt that the film was a bit too rushed in its dramatic efforts and didn't cover enough new territory (at least for me) to hold my interest. However, if you know very little about the backstage goings-on in professional wrestling, then this movie may shock you enough to truly care about Randy the Ram.