REVIEW: The Wrestler (2008)

Grade: A-

Written by: Robert D. Siegel

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Margolis, Todd Barry

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Reviewer's advice: Do not miss this film.

Darren Aronofsky's tour-de-force, pugilistic portrait of an aging, "old, broken-down piece of meat" professional wrestler known as Randy "The Ram" Robinson (in an heart-wrenchingly honest portrayal by Mickey Rourke) is as triumphant as it is despondent. Those who understand and are privy to Rourke's personal journey of hell over the last fifteen years of his life and his own tumultuous crawl back from obscurity to a chance to right his film career once again will understand exactly why he was born to play this role. This is a man who has spilt blood for many self-admittedly wasted years and squandered his talent at the mercy of his own self-destruction and inner turmoil. After viewing this brutal, touching, and unrelentingly transparent performance by an actor who does not play this role as much as he literally embodies it, I found it impossible to not experience viscerally (quite literally, in fact) the wounds, the scars, and the aching heart of a man who is walking a razor's edge at a point in his life when his failures and last gasp at reconciling these failures will either save him or plunge him into self-destruction for perhaps the last time. His search for hope, truth, and love outside of the ring makes him one of the screen's great underdogs: an unforgettable character on par with Stallone's "Rocky" or Brando in "On the Waterfront". Yes, Rourke is that good. Watching an otherwise conventional story about a down-and-outer looking for one last chance for redemption should be otherwise tiresome; Rourke makes this utterly impossible. You know a brilliant performance when it lifts an ordinary film premise far higher than its own limited means. Watching this film, Rourke is in fact so commanding in the role that you literally feel you have no right to even think that he is acting--no, this man is living before the camera. Such a performance is so unbelievably rare that it instantly becomes iconic. We are to live or die with this film. Rourke gives us no other choice.

Randy is a professional wrestler who is twenty years past his prime. He uses reading glasses when he has to, his knees pop when he stretches before a match and when he's not in the ring he wears a hearing aid. He is a has-been who lives in a trailer park, can't make rent and lives off of part-time grocery store work and weekend matches against young up-and-comers in small venues. Wrestling has become his identity and his struggles to leave the ring for good interplay with his propensities toward self-destruction and sabotage. The theme of cutting himself in order to wipe blood on his face in the ring is symbolic of this. The opening credits introduce us to the Ram's once-prolific history in the ring via a smattering of newspaper clippings and magazine articles featuring him at the height of his eighties popularity, propelled by a head-crunching eighties heavy metal tune that is to set the tone not only for the film, but for Randy's character himself. Rourke's character is a brutal, bloodletting, and at all costs body-sacrificing brute whose imposing physical presence (Rourke trained for seven months through intense weight-lifting and a low-carb, high-protein diet to prepare for the role) belies a soft-spoken, insecure, tender, but extremely lonely man whose desperate cling to his past legacy speaks volumes of the brutality he faces every day in his own heart, let alone in his aging body. In the ring a man who subjects himself to the physical beatings Randy endures in small-time matches against much younger up-and-comers is not a man who is riding a line of hope for a future--he is a man whose lack of hope is consumed by and buried in his past.

This is not to say that Randy does not reach out for hope's dangling carrot. He frequents a strip bar where his love-interest Pam (honestly and daringly played by Marisa Tomei) straddles a steel bar and performs lap dances for paying customers. For much of the film, Pam is one of two people Randy's road-killed heart reaches out to. Her fears of commitment and mixed feelings about Randy's advances towards her is an emotional tug-of-war but it is at least something better to hold on to than his character would like us to believe he's had, or not had, for that matter. Tomei plays Pam (or Cassidy, her stripper moniker) brilliantly just as she does in her past work; she truly embodies a woman who knows her own bodily abuse as much as Randy knows his, and this similarity subtly bonds the two characters while pushing forward the theme of two people searching for a way out of their respective worlds.

The other important person in Randy's life is his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). Randy has abandoned her most of her life and she is understandably furious with him and wants nothing to do with him. Randy's loneliness and inherent tender spirit drive him to locate Stephanie after a life-threatening incident propels his life and future into focus. Many of us who have viewed the film's trailer have seen the heartbreakingly real scene where Rourke effortlessly spills tears as his desperate character pleads with his daughter to simply not hate him. Wood is wonderful as Stephanie, and her fury and heartbreak is so understandable to us because of how honestly she plays it. Her simultaneous hatred of her father and desire for a daddy are constantly at war in the chronicle of exhaustion that is revealed on her face. My only real criticism of the film is that I felt that the aching father-daughter struggle between these two could have used more breadth. Wood and Rourke's chemistry made me hunger for more.

The Wrestler's video release date is set for mid-April and is worth seeing for Rourke's fantastic performance alone. He plays the role with such raw power and infuses his wrestling scenes with such brutal and physical intensity that we simultaneously wince and inhale/exhale exhilaration. And beneath the buffed-up hulk of a man Randy is, there is an aching tenderness and profound likeability in his gravelly voice that settles us into our seats even deeper in sullenness because we care for and vicariously live through this man. I found the film oddly releasing; others may find it an emotional bear. Hats off to director Darren Aronofsky for using a semi-documentary style that employs a sometimes shaky camera that follows Randy closely everywhere he goes. Aronofsky was wise to utilize this technique, as it sucks us into Randy's world in concert with Rourke's performance.

We relate so deeply to Randy the Ram because so many of us have simply screwed up so many doggone times in life: we've failed our loved ones, we question our abilities to grow and change past our circumstances, many of us struggle with everyday existential dilemmas of who we are, why we are here, and where we are going, and we question how life got so fundamentally f#@ked up. As this film progresses, Rourke simply gives us no choice but to be pinned (pun intended) to our seats, and as the film nears its climax, we have already cashed in our emotional chips--as we look on, we must come to terms with the fact that must follow wherever Rourke leads us. There is no going back. And therein lies the power of The Wrestler. And it is the reason this film is not to be missed. Brutal and breathless, this is a motion picture to be reckoned with. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back Rourke. We've missed you, Mick.

Reviewer's warning: This film contains scenes that are not for the squeamish or faint of heart.

Rated R for language, sexuality/nudity, violence, and some drug content