Heartbreaking

Rating: 7/10 (6 June 2009)

OK, after all the talk, literally, talk after talk of how wonderful Mickey Rourke's performance was in The Wrestler and that he's finally back in action. So I just had to see what all the hype was, especially after everyone started panicking when Sean Penn took the 2009 Oscar for Milk, I was curious if this movie really was as good as everyone was making it to be. So I'm going to give my honest opinion which either is going to get me a lot of hate mail or the "un-useful" marks on my comment, but I'm an honest user, I tell it like it is. The Wrestler is actually a really good movie, I would say that it was one of the top 10 that came out of 2008, but one thing that I really didn't like about the movie was the way it was made and the ending, which I'll explain why in a moment. Mickey Rourke does pull in a top performance, including Marisa Tomei, they took us on this heartbreaking story and made the movie into a small gem.
Randy "The Ram" Robinson, is a professional wrestler who was a major star in the 1980s but is now years past his prime and wrestling on the weekends for various independent promotions. Randy goes home and is locked out of his trailer for not paying the rent. Depressed, he takes pain medication and falls asleep in the back of his van. At night he visits a strip club where he has befriended a faded stripper named Pam, stage-named Cassidy. He continues the training rituals for his wrestling appearance, including steroid use and self-tanning. At his next show, Randy wrestles a brutal hardcore match, in which he and his opponent attack each other with thumbtacks, staple guns, barbed wire and glass. Post-match, Randy is treated for his wounds backstage, but he suffers a heart attack soon after and collapses. The heart attack necessitates a bypass operation and Randy is told by the doctor that his weakened heart cannot stand the stresses of steroids or wrestling. Randy cancels his upcoming matches and begins working as a deli counter operator at a supermarket. Randy visits his estranged daughter, Stephanie, whom he had left years before; she curses him and tells him to leave her alone. On his second visit to his daughter, Randy brings a thoughtful gift and admits that he has been a bad father; things seem to brighten up for him, but after a rough night, everything goes down hill for him again.
Now my two complaints, the way the movie was made, I understand what Darren Aronofsky was going for where he was trying to make us feel the realism, as if he was filming a day in our lives. But seeing the back of Mickey Rourke's head walking to work didn't exactly feel necessary to me, then there are scenes that cut too fast and made me do a double take. Then the ending, a lot of people are praising the ending, now I'm a huge film buff and I very much appreciate when a film leaves the audience with what they will give the to the movie. But for Randy's story, I felt like it was left incomplete, with him just doing his signature move and they cut to black, this is one of the stories I wished would have come to a complete circle where we see this poor man who's just broken down and find out what happened to him. I guess people are going to call this review stupid and think that I didn't understand it or don't appreciate the "imagination" factor, but honestly it's one of those endings I just felt a little cheated. But it is the performances that made this movie for me, they were real and gritty. It's the actors and the story that make The Wrestler worth watching.
7/10