Here's the first of hopefully many reviews from local film reviewer Brotherton. Finally gives us something to put into the review category anyway. Here Brotherton reviews The Wrestler.
Brotherton Reviews - The Wrestler
The Wrestler plays like a dramatized version of Beyond The Mat, a wrestling documentary which shows some of the true natures of the people involved backstage, as well the turbulent lives of some of the washed up wrestlers who are now reduced to playing to audiences in gym halls. Articles have gone off how this film is like a parallel of the life of its star, Mickey Rourke. Instead, I saw the character of Randy 'The Ram' Robinson as more of a parallel of the life of Jake "The Snake" Roberts, a wrestler who today still fights through alcoholism, drug abuse and estranged family members.
Mickey Rourke may sweep all the acting awards for his role - which is truly deserved, but its unlikely to win any major Best Picture gongs. Shot through a very grainy, amateur-style constant use of hand-held cameras, the film is like watching a documentary itself, ableit a very uncomfortable one.
Randy (Rourke) is a former 80's superstar who still exists in his own time period, once selling out stadiums, now headlining mere gym halls just to make ends meet. And when he can't pay the rent for his run-down trailer, he resorts to sleeping in his run-down van, and with a bed in the back already, its clear it ain't the first time he's done it either. We follow him throughout the film as he takes menial jobs in supermarkets to make extra cash, peroxides his hair, tans himself and takes steroids to maintain his unchanged look, and spends his evenings hanging out at a strip bar soliciting with his favourite Lap Dancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei,) a forty-something year-old who is also passed her heyday over younger, more accessible bar girls. And just like Randy, she won't move on by convincing herself Randy is nothing more than a regular customer instead of a friend.
But when he nearly dies from a heart attack -ending his wrestling career permanantely - he has to seriously re-think his life, something he can't do as he's nothing more than a relic of the 80's. A good example is when he calls over a kid neighbour to play with him on his old NES, and he simply can't grasp it when the kid talks about Call Of Duty 4.
This is not a happy film. This ain't the Rocky of wrestling, but that doesn't stop it from being a brilliant, if emotionally draining drama. While this film isn't original with the usual cliches of Stripper Love Interest & Angry Daughter rouytines, the outcomes aren't the Hollywood cookie-cutter results we typically expect. They go the real route we dread seeing. And better yet, this film doesn't cynically mock the wrestling industry. We all know wrestling is fake and borders on sheer pantomime, but this film shows an affection for the blood (lots of it) and sweat the wrestlers spilled each night just to please the crowds, but also shows that a life in wrestling is inevitabley a short-lived one.
4 out of 5.
