This is Mickey Rourke's Film!

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2009)

The Wrestler is a film about an aging professional wrestler who is having to come to grips with his own mortality. I saw it just the other night, and while I was blown away by certain aspects of it, others just left me a tad dissatisfied.
The Wrestler is the latest film from visionary director Darren Arronofsky, but this time around Arronofsky has taken a far more simpler approach to directing and has shifted away from the visuals and rather towards the acting. While I was slightly disappointed in Arronofsky's direction, simply because he seems to be refusing who he truly is as a filmmaker in this film, he does manage to generate terrific performances from his actors; in particular Mickey Rourke's Oscar worthy performance as Randy "the Ram" Robinson. While Arronofsky's direction left me with a little more to be desired, the script by Robert Siegel was superb, as well the 16 mm cinematography was beautifully utilized throughout.
Overall the Wrestler was a good character study, but without Mickey Rourke this film would have been a forgettable experience. This film truly is Rourkes and no one else's. While I am a tad more critical of the direction mainly because I am such a big fan of Arronofsky's previous works, there is still no denying that the direction fit the story and its style, even if it was not as visually stimulating as an Arronofsky fan could have hoped. In the end the Wrestler was a film that I enjoyed, but the story's depressing nature and overall brutality keeps it from being a film that you will want to watch more than once.
I give the Wrestler a good 7 out of 10!