The Wrestler

Another of the movies that I had the chance to DVR during one of the free preview weekends was The Wrestler. It's got multiple upcoming showings on various cable channels in the Cinemax family, starting with 10:45 PM tomorrow (March 29) on 5Star Max. So once again, I made a point of sitting down to watch the movie to be able to do a review on it here.

Despite the title, the movie isn't really about wrestling. Mickey Rourke plays the titular wrestler, a man named Randy "The Ram" Robinson who was big back in the 1980s, and has a scrapbook of promotional materials to prove it. Well, not just to prove it, but also to show for it, as he doesn't have much else. He lives in a trailer park in suburban New Jersey, making a pittance in small halls putting on wrestling matches with other wrestlers who were big back in the day. It's kind of like Rocky Balboa boxing in the church basement at the beginning of Rocky, only where Rocky found himself on the way up, Randy the Ram is clearly on the way down.

The Ram isn't doing himself any favors with his financial management either, spending money not just on steroids and painkillers, but also at the strip club, where he thinks one of the strippers, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), might be interested in him. Cassidy, like the Ram, is clearly on the way down, as she's got a son who's pushing double-digits and some of the patrons at the strip club are commenting on her age. But while Cassidy does have some sympathy for the Ram, she also has a line which she insists on not crossing as it'd be a big mistake for her personal life to get involved with any of her customers. The Ram doesn't quite seem to understand it.

To make ends meet, besides trying to keep wrestling the Ram works odd shifts at a supermarket, mostly unloading the trucks that bring all of the groceries. He's consistently trying to get more shifts from a boss who is clearly disdainful of pro wrestling, and who only seems to have weekend shifts to offer, which is a problem for the Ram since all of the wrestling shows are on Friday and Saturday nights that require him to be out of town.

Things all change for the Ram at one of the shows. Pro wrestling, regardless of how "fake" (Jesse Ventura liked to ask, "Is ballet fake?" to suggest that the bouts are choreographed although the results are predetermind) you might think it is, is still extremely demanding physically. And for somebody past 50 like the Ram, that lifetime of wrestling and drugs of various sorts has taken a pretty severe toll on his body. One night after a bout, he collapses in the locker room.

Randy wakes up in the hospital to find out that he's had a heart attack and several bypasses. He'll be able to do light exercise, but there's no way that "light exercise" is enough for the physical demands of doing professional wrestling. Unfortunately for him, much like Laurence Olivier's character in The Entertainer, Randy doesn't know anything else. He's able to make a bit of money still doing public appearances and selling autographs on the memorabilia circuit, and is even able to get full time work at the supermarket. But his life is empty.

Cassidy suggests trying to re-connect with his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), whom Randy hasn't seen in ages, something that understandably makes Stephanie deeply resentful. It doesn't help that Randy is still less than dependable considering his hard drinking and partying at the strip club.

Finding work at the supermarket unfulfilling, Randy thinks about the upcoming 20th anniversary of a big match against another guy who had the character of "The Ayatollah", in a time when it was even easier to make a villain out of someone theoretically associated with the Iranian theocracy. The Ayatollah has retired and is moderately successful selling used cars out west, but before Randy's heart attack he agreed to come back for one match. Randy, despite the fact that actually going out on the mat might give him another heart attack that could prove fatal, decides to go against medical advice and fight the Ayatollah after all.

As I said at the beginning, The Wrestler isn't really about wrestling, despite the amount of pro wrestling shown along with the behind-the-scenes stuff in the locker room. In fact, it's a character study about a man in Randy (and to a lesser extent Cassidy) who only knows one thing to do in life, and won't have much of a life without that one thing. It's part of why I brought up Rocky and The Entertainer, which touch on some of the same things, with The Entertainer being in a completely different milieu from The Wrestler.

But as with Olivier in The Entertainer, Mickey Rourke puts in a fine performance, one you might not have expected from him if you weren't watching the movie long after it was released. Marisa Tomei also does quite well, and Evan Rachel Wood is pretty good in her few scenes although I think the script has her be a bit too extreme when it requires her to be angry with her father. The direction from Darren Aronofsky is quite raw, which fits in well with the material.

If you haven't seen The Wrestler, it's definitely one you should find the time to watch.