Too familiar in its story to be a really great movie

Rating: 7/10 (11 January 2009)

A small film about a big man. Mickey Rourke is, as you've certainly heard, outstanding as an aging wrestler who was famous back in the '80s and still plugs along at small events. Small those events may be, but they don't skip on the showmanship. One particularly brutal match rubs out the possibility of any more, and he has to take his life into perspective. He tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and form a real relationship with a frequently-visited stripper (Marisa Tomei). Frankly, my opinion of the film is lower than that of most who have seen it. When The Wrestler focuses on wrestling, it's spectacular. It's very detail-oriented, and you can just sense how much Rourke, the big lug, loves it. And the aforementioned brutal match is sure to be one of the most shocking things you'll see in any 2008 film. I rarely am disturbed by what I see in a movie, but I was wincing hard at it. When the plot kicks in, though, I just found it to be utterly predictable. It's made out of three basic clichés: the old pro who desperately wants to re-achieve his former glory, the family member connecting with an estranged family member and the sex worker unsure of whether she should cross the line between her profession and her feelings. I could never get very excited about it, because I felt I knew exactly where it was going and I never was wrong.