Emotional Pounding.

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2009)

"Well I'm frustrated, outdated, I really wanna be over-rated. I'm a finder and I'm a keeper; I'm not a loser and I ain't no weeper. I got the boys to make a noise Won't ever let up - Hope it annoys you! Join the pack, feel the crack! Well now you're here - There's no way back!" -- Quiet Riot, Bang Your Head.
Director Darren Aronofsky bodyslams us for a three-count with THE WRESTLER, a modern masterpiece; controlled, poignant, inspiring, funny, ultimately heart-wrenching with a Ramjet dive off the turnbuckle.
All that wayward talk about Mickey Rourke winning Mr. Oscar; it's well-founded. His performance as The Wrestler is music sweet music - specifically, 1980s hair metal. Not only does he pull the shameless Oscar Moments ("I'm a broken-down piece of meat" - you've seen the trailers), he also does the most natural on screen acting since the 1970s (think: JAWS or THE EXORCIST) - and that's him in the ring, performing all his wrestling stunts himself.
A triple-threat performance so remarkable *should* be rewarded - even if it's just the political hokum of the Academy Awards.
THE WRESTLER opens with posters of wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Rourke), in a montage of his glamorous, storied career, while Quiet Riot's "Bang Your Head" slams at the soundtrack; some posters feature his watershed bout with "The Ayatollah" at Madison Square Garden.
Crash-cut to 20 years later in a lonely dressing room after an exhibition match, with Randy accepting a light pay packet (the usual managerial excuse "Not as many people as I thought"). He is down but not out, long dyed-blond locks, long in the tooth, long past his Use By date, yet punishing his body in small matches for small pay.
"Well I'm frustrated, outdated..."
With a Steadicam following so close behind him we can hear his labored breathing and count the wrinkles on his puffy, battered face, our first intimate adventure with Randy is him being locked out of his trailer (for late rent) after returning from a match, eventually sleeping in his Dodge van.
Some glamour.
"I really wanna be over-rated."
Aronofsky is intent on showing us the side of this vocation farthest from the bright lights and the crowd roar, following Randy so closely we almost get a steroid high from breathing in the stank of his sweaty, bloody tights; blonding his hair, tanning his hide, doping on painkillers, buying a sweater for his estranged daughter...
He makes time at a strip club with stripper, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) who - ironically - doesn't treat him like a slab of meat, and though they share a few tender moments, she forces herself to regard him as "just a customer." And though we know he feels for Cassidy - not least because she spends so much time rubbing her firm naked ta-tas against his brickhouse biceps in private dances - he keeps up that tough man-facade...
"I'm a finder and I'm a keeper; I'm not a loser and I ain't no weeper."
Mickey Rourke has always had a body carved from unyielding rock; a background in boxing and self-abuse has brought him this wrestler's meat-muscle frame. The Wrestler IS Mickey Rourke. Though something seems very "wrong" and misshapen about that steamtrain frame, like it is being driven by will alone and one misstep will implode it.
Randy is obviously the oldest still on the circuit, yet the camaraderie of the wrestler brotherhood is apparent - backstage, they all give him the respect he has earned. But he is not fighting these young man-mountains anyway - he is battling his own failing body.
"I got the boys to make a noise; Won't ever let up - Hope it annoys you!"
Wheels go into motion for a 20th Anniversary Rematch against The Ayatollah, but after an exceptionally gruesome match, Randy is felled by a heart attack and doctors warn him "never to exert himself again."
"But doc, I'm a professional wrestler."
"Join the pack, feel the crack!"
Faced with potential death if he steps into the ring again, Randy reassesses his stagnant life and bleak future. He tries to stomach the nostalgic sludge of a reminiscence tour, but realizes being put out to pasture and signing autographs for $8 a pop won't sustain his spirit.
His day job behind a deli counter becomes intolerable (his dweeby boss denigrating him at every turn); his reconciliation with his daughter goes awry (for Randy is, in fact, a shiftless, unreliable broken down piece of meat); his uncertain courtship of stripper Cassidy falls flat, and Randy realizes that for all the battering he has taken in the ring, "The only place I get hurt is out there."
He is a Wrestler, only alive in the ring. Neither doctors nor time nor his body nor his heart can make him stop being one.
"Well now you're here - There's no way back!"
THE WRESTLER is a tragic commentary for those who chance into the insular world of stardom; we have made no place in our shallow, blitzkrieg society for them to graciously decompress.
Streetfighter Jack Wilson warns Philo Beddoe in ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN: "You're fast and you like pain. You eat it like candy. I've seen a few cases like that in my time. The more they get hurt, the more dangerous they become. But you gotta be durable, too. Real durable. Most ain't."
"Bang your head! Metal health will drive you mad!"
KAPOW!
--Review by Poffy the Cucumber (for Poffy's Movie Mania).