A better performance than movie

Rating: 6/10 (9 June 2010)

Twenty years ago Randy "The Ram" Robinson was a professional wrestling legend. Twenty years is a long time. Now he is a lonely, broken-down shell of a man. His past glories long behind him he still wrestles but now it is far from the bright lights and big arenas. Instead he ekes out a meager living on the independent circuit, performing in front of tiny crowds in high school gyms and community centers. To help make ends meet he unloads boxes at a supermarket. He's behind on his rent. He's falling apart physically and taking enough drugs to open his own pharmacy. Hopelessly estranged from his daughter he has no family. Not much in the way of friends either as his closest relationship is with an aging stripper who keeps him at arm's length. He leads a miserable, lonely life. He longs for the 1980s, mocking Kurt Cobain while extolling the virtues of Ratt. No, Randy the Ram hasn't evolved much in the past twenty years. He is who he is and that's all it seems he will ever be. Can he change? Maybe even grow a little? He can't be Randy the Ram forever, at some point he has to get on with his life and be Randy Robinson. As you watch his story unfold you can't help but feel he'll never get to that point. This is a man whose past always haunts his present.
Mickey Rourke received all kinds of accolades for his portrayal of The Ram and deservedly so. It's a gripping, powerful, somewhat haunting performance. Portraying this character is not exactly a stretch for Rourke. Sometimes it's hard to see where Rourke ends and The Ram begins. He embodies the character like no other actor could. But for as good as Rourke is the movie around him is not always up to the standards of his performance. There's very little character development. The Ram doesn't change, that's the whole point of the movie. And his character is the only one we get to know at all. His relationship with his stripper friend, played by Marisa Tomei, is never put into any context at all. We never get any sense what the real connection is between these two. We know they're both desperately clinging to careers which at their age they can't hold on to very much longer. But there has to be more to their relationship than that. At least you'd hope there would be. The emotional connection doesn't seem to be there. And this movie really could use some emotional connections. There's some emotion in The Ram's meetings with his daughter Stephanie but those scenes are fleeting. And Stephanie, played by Evan Rachel Wood, comes off as a bit of a spoiled brat. Maybe her father has given her good reason to be as cold as she is but we never get enough context to understand and appreciate that. Her character, like every character in the movie other than Randy, remains too much of an unknown. This is undeniably Randy the Ram's movie, his story. But perhaps a little too much so. And in the end where has this story taken us? It's an often bleak, depressing ride following this character whose story basically is that there is no story. He can't change. He's Randy the Ram, for good or for bad. Rourke's work here is excellent but the movie as a whole is something less spectacular.