Like an ode to Kerry Von Erich

Rating: 9/10 (21 October 2010)

This is a movie you should see if you've ever loved professional wrestling. It's also a movie you should see if you've ever hated professional wrestling. Either way, you'll find a deeper understanding of this violent pantomime that has thrilled millions and killed far too many of its own.
Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) was a huge star during the wrestling boom of the 1980s. But 20 years later, he's an aging and broken down man out of time. Whatever wealth he had is gone. Whatever future he had, never was. He lives in a trailer, when he's not locked out for failing to pay his rent. He drives a van that looks like it came out of a 1970s slasher film. He dresses like a guy who's been homeless for 3 years. He spends his week unloading trucks at a grocery store. On the weekend, though, that all goes away. He puts on his shiny tights and steps into the ring once again. It's kind of a pathetic life, but it could have gone on for a long time.
Until after a so-called "hardcore" match, where Randy gets slashed by barbed wire and has broken glass and tacks embedded in his skin, "The Ram" has a heart attack. He wakes up in the hospital and is told he can't ever wrestle again. That finally pushes Randy to re-evaluate his life and his relationships. He actually tries to get a real job. He tries to reconnect with his long-neglected daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). He tries to get through the tough shell of a stripper named Cassidy and forge a relationship with the single mother named Pam (Marisa Tomei) inside. We learn, however, that if Randy had been capable of getting his life in orderhe'd have done it a long time ago. It's too late for him to stop being "The Ram", no matter what it costs.
This story is sad and depressing on a very deep level. If that's not your thing, this probably isn't the film for you. If you can stand it, there's a purity of human emotion to The Wrestler that's quite something. Randy "The Ram" isn't a likable character in the traditional sense, but Mickey Rourke takes this loser, this screw up, this bad father and makes you recognize something of yourself in him. Or he makes you see something in him that you wish you had. Maybe Randy's life is ending badly and maybe it's his own fault, but he'll face that end without flinching and no one can really hope for much more than that when their time comes.
It doesn't overstate it to say there's probably no other actor who could have pulled off this role than Mickey Rourke. There may be other performers as talented, yet no amount of make up or Method could measure up to the years of hard living in Rourke's own life. Randy "The Ram" is a man who was larger than life and is now worn down to the bone, physically, mentally and emotionally. Only someone like Rourke, who's journeyed through his own wasteland of failure and self-destruction, could allow Randy to be that small and spent and quiet.
Marisa Tomei is also very good as Cassidy/Pam. She mirrors Randy's story as a stripper who has gotten to old for her profession. There just aren't going to be many more good days for Cassidy at the strip club as fewer and fewer guys care to bother with her. And Tomei lets us see the distinction between Cassidy the stripper and Pam the woman and mother. For Pam, Cassidy is just a costume she puts on to make money. She'd rather be her real self but Pam is terribly afraid of showing that to anyone but her son. That's distinguishes her from Randy, who actually prefers his costume to his real self. In fact, he wants Randy "The Ram" Robinson to be more real than Robin Ramzinski.
Evan Rachel Wood doesn't have as much to work with as Rourke or Tomei, but she gives her all to the searing anger and hurt in Stephanie. She's not just mad at her father for abandoning her. She's mad at herself for still wanting him to be her dad.
For wrestling fans, this movie will show you how harsh and brutal the lives of your favorite performers can be. For wrestling haters, this film will show you the brotherhood that exists in one of the world's last true carnivals and what it really means to stand in the ring and be the center of everyone's attention, even if it's just a few dozen people in a bingo hall.
I imagine some people mistake Randy Robinson for some version of Hulk Hogan or even Randy "Macho Man" Savage, but he's not. Those guys and others like them were smarter and more ambitious. They used wrestling as much as wrestling used them. No, Randy "The Ram" is more like what Kerry Von Erich might have become if poor Kerry hadn't killed himself when he was still a relatively young man. Kerry's love of and need for wrestling was so profound and so twisted that even when doctors had to cut off his foot after a motorcycle accident, Kerry had a special prosthetic boot made so he could still get in the ring and perform. The story is that Kerry even showered with his boots on, so his fellow wrestlers wouldn't discover his infirmity. All Kerry Von Erich ever knew was pro wrestling and he couldn't even imagine anything else. Sometimes that level of devotion can lead a man to greatness. The Wrestler is about what happens when it doesn't.