Aronofsky seems to be suggesting that professional wrestling is staged...

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2009)

Mickey Rourke delivers a performance here that will mark his place in movie history – something that nobody would have predicted a few years back when his career was on the skids and his pretty-boy looks had been battered beyond recognition by his time as a professional boxer. Thank God the studio relented and allowed director Aronofsky to use Rourke instead of their preferred choice of Nic Cage (Nic Cage – can you imagine it? What a mess he would have made of the part.) The parallels between Randy 'The Ram' Robinson and Rourke are obvious and well-documented, and Rourke must have felt he was born to play the role the moment he first read the script. Marisa Tomei, as the ageing stripper with whom he begins a tentative relationship also gives a notable performance.
The story is nothing new, and the characters have been seen before in countless movies, but it isn't the story that's the thing here but the depth of the characterisation and the verisimilitude. Robinson is a man who time has passed by, still living off glory days that have long gone. Twenty years past his prime, he lives in a trailer park, drives a beat up van, frequents seedy strip clubs and fights in town halls and run-down social clubs. The wrestling circuit is the only world he is comfortable with because it's the one that has fashioned him and it is the one in which he earns the respect of his peers. In the real world, even though he's a nice, gentle guy, he is awkward and out of place. His boss looks down on him, and he is most comfortable with kids who like him for who he is. But the world Robinson prefers is a sham, a pantomime for which he dies his hair, fakes his tan and pumps his body full of steroids, and in some respects it is similar to the spurious glamour of Pam/Cassidy's job. The pair of them are both past their prime, but while Cassidy realises the fact and begins to make attempts to escape the life of a stripper, Robinson finds himself drawn back to the comfort of the world of wrestling after a heart attack forces his unplanned retirement.
The sub-plot regarding Robinson's relationship with his estranged daughter, like all other aspects of the plot, is very ordinary on paper, but it elicits some remarkable performances from Evan Rachel Wood and Rourke in their scenes together.
Aronofsky leaves the final scene open. Robinson might be leaping to his death or to one last victory. Either way, it's fairly certain he won't return to the ring.