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The Wrestler

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

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Release Date: January 30th, 2009
Release Date: 16th January, 2009

Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Synopsis: A drama centered on retired professional wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson as he makes his way through the independent circuit, trying to get back in the game for one final showdown with his former rival.

 

The Wrestler Theatrical Trailer

Official ‘The Wrestler’ Movie Website

Movie Review by Marty Meltz Quality – 9 out of 10

Wow. Imaginative cinema art, garishly virile sport, red-blooded personalities of the first magnitude. Yes, go for this, an uncommonly dramatic movie with jolting power of personality.

Philip Andre “Mickey” Rourke, Jr., born September 16, 1952, now returns at 56 to the big screen after a lifetime of controversial roles that have made him a poster boy of masculinity in France but a politically incorrect whipping boy for American critics. His sin: he has dominated women, definitely unacceptable in these empowerment times (his most infamously impudent, the 1986 “9 1/2 Weeks” with Kim Basinger). He’s best remembered from his 1982 cult classic, “Diner.”

I cannot be more impressed by Rourke’s performance, up there where the air is rare with the best of the year (not likely to get any Oscar, of course — political incorrectness dies hard). This is a strikingly accomplished role by an actor who’s obviously a believer in the roles he plays.

A film of advanced megawattage in its energy, sure of its film technique, it frankly forsakes any profound plot and instead creates a story made up of crackling images and vibrant individuals, not events, although those events are done up with the most creative audio-visual power.

Blistering the screen with amazingly well-calculated hand-held camera shots, never overdone, the film plays at all the things unsaid by faces etched by lifetimes of personal travail.

The personalities have one thing in common: life has been hard and limiting for them.

A lifetime professional boxer and wrestler in his real life, Rourke stars here as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a big, big bruiser of a hulk, who barrels about in long, dyed-blond hair with a jumbled, puffy face. Although a has-been for the last 20 years, the man’s in decent shape and is inclined to go for the top in the pro wrestling circuit.

Randy is working class man’s sports hero. For them, he’s real, not one of those walking wrestling cartoons of absurd machismo, self-styled freaks that play on fantasy. Early on, a bunch of those muscle-bound stars pal around with each other, planning ahead for the moves in coming matches.

For bucks, he totes cartons at a box store, thrilling little boys, but the work hardly even puts bread on the table and does not pay the rent on his trailer home. He circulates among low-rent rooms, American Legion halls, seedy clubs and nondescript shops (shot in New Jersey). He does maintain his dignity by frequenting a gentlemen’s club, there to check out weather-worn stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). But, by way of a heart attack, he’ll soon be aware of his mortality after the next wrestling bout, an event of horrendous, barbarously grotesque pounding.

He needs a woman. But neither Cassidy nor his long-disconnected daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) are sure about allowing into their lives so physically and emotionally battered a man. Yet he continues to pursue a 20th-anniversary rematch of his most famous bout, “Ram vs.Ayatollah.”

Read More Movie Reviews at Marty at the Movies

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'The Wrestler' Stars

Darren Aronofsky, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Mark Margolis, Mickey Rourke, Todd Barry, Wass Stevens