Sometimes living in Los Angeles has it’s perks. Sometimes it sucks. The sucks times are when you really need to be somewhere and you are stuck on the free for hours because of a stupid fender bender THAT WON’T GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE DAMN LANE! The perky part is when a friend calls you up on a Wednesday night with free tickets to The Wrestler, a movie that is getting great reviews (98% on Rottentomatoes) that most of the country can’t even see yet. Read on for my review…
First, a little background on me: I am a part time actor and the guy with the free tickets is a full-time actor. Also, both of us were huge wrestling fans when we were young. He followed it all through the 80′s (his favorite alltime is Magnum TA) and I followed it from the late 80′s through the early 00′s (my favorite all time is Rob Van Dam). So this movie should be right up my alley…
and it was! I loved it (more so than my friend) from the first get go. The way in which the fallen superstar is followed and the genuine nature of the dialogue is perfect, and makes it seem like a documentary at times. There are moments when I swear I am watching Beyond the Mat (which you should see before this movie so you’re accustomed to that world a little bit) and have to remind myself that it’s a movie. Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Pi) does such a perfect job of showing you what life is like for 99% of wrestlers from that generation: depressing. Be warned that this is not a happy movie. Ever. And I feel it shouldn’t be. Most wrestlers from the 80′s and early 90′s live exactly the same life, constantly battling addiction, loneliness, and poverty for this small slice of notoriety. It’s a sad reality of the business, and shouldn’t be sugar coated in a film about it. And it isn’t.
Mickey Rourke (Sin City, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) plays this part perfectly. He looks exactly like I expect a 50 year-old wrestler to look: body scarred from years of performance and over tanning, hair still long and bleached out, the bloated ‘weight lifter’s stomach’. It’s all painted perfectly. Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny, In the Bedroom) plays a stripper that is in a similar cycle as Rourke’s character, and does an admirable job of tugging at your heart strings as she is just trying to get out of the game. Plus, she has her top off in half the scenes she’s in which never hurts. Evan Rachel Wood (Running With Scissors, Across the Universe) plays Rourke’s daughter and gives a very humanistic performance by showing how the wrestling lifestyle not only hurts those involved in it directly, but also so many others.
I guess I should give a warning about the violence in the movie, as it gets pretty bad at some points. I had no problem with it as a veteran of backyard wrestling documentaries (I own Beyond the Mat, The Backyard, and The Rise and Fall of ECW) but my friend at one point had to look away. So be ready for that.
As far as shout outs to hardcore wrestling fans, there are plenty. They use ring set ups and posters from the now defunct CZW, ROH, and JAPW which is a nice detail to the independent fans out there. I also recognized Ron “The Truth” Killings, The Blue Meanie, and Ernest “The Cat” Miller the second they were on screen (wow, has The Cat let himself go. Either that or he went all DeNiro on this role). They even do a great, not so subtle shout out to Terry Funk. Actually, they basically just cast a guy to do a great impression of him. And the chanting! Oh god, my favorite part of live wrestling events (is that the ECW Arena in Philly I see in the end match?!) is captured perfectly as the fans chant with each successive move in the match.
You’re going to hear about this movie over the next few month as it generates Oscar buzz (definitely for Rourke and most likely for Best Picture in the Little Miss Sunshine/Juno type slot), and I suggest you go check it out. It’s gritty, it’s real, and it’s heart breaking.
Best lines whispered between me and my friend during the movie:
after Tomei tells Rourke he needs to go see his daughter – “Thanks for the life advice, stripper!”
“I think the subtext of the movie is that every single character wants to put a gun in their mouth at some point”
after the movie is over the we’re filing out – “Oh man, they had so many places to go for Christmas!”