Much like its protagonist, 'The Wrestler' is a flawed beast with a massive heart

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2009)

'The Wrestler' is the kind of movie you enjoy immensely while watching, and then, a few days later, find yourself wondering whether it was really all that good. You watch it again, and it's still pretty good. Darren Aronofosky's latest work, I'm glad to say, falls only a shade short of brilliance.
Much has been made (and will continue to be made) of the parallels between the story of Randy 'The Ram' Robinson and the man who plays him, Mickey Rourke. I will say no more than that Rourke is perfectly cast and, yes, OBVIOUSLY there's a lot of him in Randy. Rourke is far and away the greatest reason for the film's success - the story is fairly predictable, slides into dangerously corny dramatic places and the dialog serves up hokiness to match. But these flaws, like Randy's, only add to the charm of the film. While the screenplay might become a little too sentimental at times, Rourke never does. He imbues the Ram with conviction, pride and a kind of screwed-up goodness of heart that results in a screen presence so powerfully and, dare I say it, perfectly drawn it achieves a transcendent greatness the cinema hasn't seen since Daniel Day-Lewis in 'There Will Be Blood'.
You will root for the Ram. I guarantee it. He's not that smart, he's done a lot of things wrong, but he didn't MEAN to, y'see - convincing the audience of this is the movie's greatest triumph. It would have been easy to portray Randy as a poor dumb big fella, a 'sad-sack giant', and have the audience hurt a little bit in sympathy every time another character is mean to him. And Randy does get hurt a LOT in this film, physically as well as emotionally, but with Rourke taking it all in good humor and fighting to keep his head high, you will bristle in anger rather than cry in sadness when the hero is wronged. But this strength also creates a weakness, in that the primary tension of the movie becomes the audience's fear of seeing ANOTHER bad thing happen to Randy, which, for obvious reasons, disappears upon a second viewing.
Lucky the other actors are also very good. Marisa Tomei is customarily excellent as Randy's only friend, and Evan Rachel Wood shares a couple of very good sequences with Rourke as his estranged daughter. Randy's wrestling colleagues are all played by real professional wrestlers, lending a true authenticity to the matches and locker room scenes.
But what's the movie about? Rourke is Randy, an aging wrestler who was a superstar in the '80s but has been reduced to nothing more than an old-timer with a familiar name on much less glamorous wrestling circuits, performing at makeshift venues for tiny crowds. His only friend is Cassidy, a stripper who is also getting on a bit. Randy's plans for a comeback are scuppered when he has a heart attack after a particularly brutal bout; he has to quit wrestling, and finds himself completely unable to handle life outside the ring. His sense of mortality leads him to seek out his daughter after years of separation. She hates him, rather a lot and evidently for good reason.
Much more interesting than Rourke-Ram comparisons are Ram-Cassidy ones. Cassidy, whose real name is Pam, is a performer growing into middle age in what is typically a young-person job. They both expose themselves in front of adoring strangers, use fake names because their real ones aren't snappy or sexy enough, and they're both growing too old to keep doing what they do. Casting Tomei as a stripper could easily be misconstrued as an excuse for nudity, but it turns out instead to be the movie's major masterstroke outside of casting Rourke.
In my opinion, all good movies string together scene after memorable scene, and 'The Wrestler' has plenty of them. The backstage camaraderie of the wrestlers, the three big matches, Randy's stint behind a meat counter in a supermarket and the subplot with his daughter are all uniformly well done. The latter, in particular, is charming in a cheesy way - made so by Rourke again.
To conclude, 'The Wrestler' is a fairy tale. It is simple and clear, despite the relative ambiguity of its ending, and it rides completely - I mean it, completely - on Mickey Rourke's performance. For an actor to elevate an ordinary movie to greatness is no inconsiderable achievement. And this is only the first step of a comeback for him.
Highly recommended.