The Wrestler (2008)

The Wrestler is a very good drama filled with originality. The film follows a fictional character named Randy "Ram" Robinson whose a "has been" wrestler. His prime far behind him and continues to wrestle hoping to get back in the lime light.

The acting Mickey Rourke was quite good deserving his Oscar nomination. His feelings of loneliness and isolation is very heart felt and sad to watch. His search for some sort of love becomes far more important to him as wrestling now endangers his life. He attempts to reconcile with his daughter played by Evan Rachel Wood and takes a love interest in a stripper played very well by Marisa Tomei. Altogether it culminates into a very sad, open but yet satisfying ending. The authenticity of all the emotions could not be better displayed by any other actor than Mickey Rourke who like his character shares many experiences and hardships in order to get back to fame. It brings out an amazing amount of depth out of his character and simply pushes the film to that of the least a very good movie.

The direction of Darren Aronofsky and writing of Robert Siegel combined for an amazingly heart felt sympathy portrayal of a man. The movie is left open yet simultaneously feels as if its all we need to know. That we've gotten what we need to see and can figure out things for ourselves. The abrasive and gritty look of the movie only adds to the emotions felt for the character. Usually I would not mention this at all but Bruce Springsteen's song was a superb song for the movie as he always captures the scope of a movie and its complicity.

Hopefully this film will set up Mickey Rourke for more films to make as he has certainly convinced me here that hes worthy of more lead roles. His comeback story is compelling in that he was literally a forgotten soul up until this was made. He reputation had dispersed so much that it took years of searching for distributors from Darren Aronofsky that would accept Mickey Rourke as the lead actor. Well it certainly payed off and it shouldn't of been made any other way.

Fmovies: Mickey Rourke returns to the big screen in Darren Aronofsky's brilliant character study, The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke gained about 35 pounds of muscle to play Randy 'The Ram' Robinson and looks the part of an old beaten down wrestler. Aronofsky creates a cold atmosphere that leaves the audience feeling as old and depressed as Rourke's character. The Wrestler doesn't have the look or feel of any previous Aronofsky film, it is mainly hand-held and has a gritty look to it that gives it a documentary feel. This film sucked me in. I really felt for the main character. I felt his pain and anger throughout the film. I felt his desperation. When a film has you reflecting the emotions expressed on the screen then it has accomplished something. I also appreciated that the story focused on two professions that are frowned upon in society, that being professional wrestling and stripping. Both professions are linked in the film and has the audience realize how similar they are. We also see the hardship of carrying out such a profession. I really enjoyed this film and had the pleasure of meeting the director after the showing. I was most impressed with him and can't wait till this film gets released.

The authenticity is the hallmark of this movie combined with vivid cinematography and set design. An amazing career-best performance from Mickey Rourke and outstanding work by Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, the film is very powerful and emotional. Again, an exceptional achievement by a true artist-Rourke. His performance is so penetrating, wise, and authentic that it deserves the Oscar. Randy "The Ram" Robinson was the biggest wrestler in the world, back in the 80s. Now it's 2008 and while things have changed, in his head he's stuck back in good old days. He's still wrestling, even though the money and his audiences are long gone. His aging body can no longer take the punishment. Aronofsky really captures the magic in Mickey's performance. It is the true essence of method acting. He is "The Ram".

The Wrestler fmovies. As someone who's a fan and who has actually worked behind the scenes in pro wrestling, I can tell you that Randy "The Ram" Robinson's story is a very respectful and realistic portrayal of the toll pro wrestling takes on its stars' lives. Certainly not everyone in the biz ends up as destitute and lonely as Randy was - some do, definitely - but those who end up well-off in every sense of the word (like Hulk Hogan, John Cena, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Rock, for instance) are VERY, VERY rare. Most end up somewhere in between.

Interestingly, as precarious as Randy's health became, however, if he were in his mid-50's (as was Mickey Rourke at the time), he still had a longer pro wrestling career than many others who abused their body likewise. Randy still was made up of some very tough stuff and in fact beat the odds with his career length.

When asked "is pro wrestling fake?", I always answer, "only where it needs to be" - i.e., the story lines and SOME of the action. No one deliberately sets out to end another one's career, but like any other contact sport such as pro football, the athleticism and subsequent pain & injury are all TOO real. There's no "off season" in pro wrestling, and certainly no astronomically high salaries as other pro athletes make - not by a long shot. But in pro wrestling you'll find the best athletes in the world.

Bottom line: It's a brutal business and an extremely hard way to make a living - period. That's why the men and women who stick with it and suffer all they do is for one reason only - because they love it. May God bless them all. :)

Very rarely an artistic come back is so pointed, so truthful and/or so honest. Mickey Rourke is extraordinary here and I can assure you, he'll break your heart. "It's not over until you (pointing at the audience) tell me its over" Who was saying that? Mickey Rourke himself or his character? Both, I think both. I felt a chill run down my spine, the kind of chill you feel when confronted by an unvarnished truth. Darren Aronofsky is definitely someone to watch and to follow. His characters face limit situations and he finds torturous paths for them to travel. What makes the whole thing endurable is the unmistakable signs of self awareness. In "The Wrestler" the painful meeting between Ram and his daughter (played by Evan Rachel Wood) have the overwhelming weight of the truth without a hint of sentimentality. As we are approaching Oscar season I imagine already a fight to the finish between Sean Penn for "Milk" and Mickey Rourke for "The Wrestler" They both deserve the highest accolade. What a year!

Enough has been written already about Mickey Rourke's real-life parallels with his fictional character in The Wrestler. Yes, it makes the story seem even realer, and is perhaps what attracted Rourke to the project. (Or perhaps not — perhaps, instead, it is what attracted Darren Aronofsky to the actor.) But to focus on such surface similarities seems like an undermining of his work here. Rourke may not be as out-of-his-comfort-zone as Sean Penn in Milk, the only other Oscar-worthy lead performance this year, but that is merely a testament to his fundamental understanding of his character: Randy is an understated guy with big scars, both literally and figuratively. He's been wrestling for years — now reduced to borderline tribute shows in front of dwindling crowds, scrounging up barely enough cash to buy the variety of drugs and steroids he needs to maintain his weight. He lives in a trailer park and gets locked out for not being able to keep up rent. He works part-time at a grocery store and visits strip clubs regularly, because it's the only place where he seemingly has any meaningful connections with another human being — namely the dancer Cassidy (played by Marisa Tomei), who is similarly a bit older than most peers in her "profession," yet doesn't really know any other way to live.

The Wrestler draws immediate comparison to the classics of working class cinema, including Rocky and On the Waterfront. Sylvester Stallone returned to his iconic character two years to bring resolution to the life of Rocky Balboa, the Philly boxer who got back in the ring for one final match . It was a good film and touched on similar themes — a nice guy stuck in a mean world, an estranged child– and ultimately both films present us with the dilemma these men find themselves in: too old to continue doing what they know best, and too old to learn how to do anything else.

Whereas Rocky Balboa was a trip down memory lane, it was hardly as bleak or frank as The Wrestler, which is a vastly superior film. Darren Aronofsky has established himself with this picture as one of the most important of modern American filmmakers; to acknowledge that this work is from the same man who directed The Fountain is astonishing, because they couldn't be farther apart on a sylistic level. The Wrestler is grainy, low-key and rough. It isn't polished, fantastical or elaborate. And that suits the material perfectly. The fact that Aronofsky was willing to almost entirely reinvent his approach for the benefit of the story is more than admirable. He deserves a nomination.

Tomei is wonderful in her supporting role, fleshing out her character (again, both literally and figuratively) with greater competence than most actresses would probably be able to manage, because it's a fairly obvious role — the "stripper with a heart of gold" who is the object of desire for the gruff guy with a tortured soul. Yet she manages to strike a balance in the film as one of two female roles, the other belonging to Evan Rachel Wood as Randy's emotionally severed daughter.

The Wrestler is impressive for all its smaller parts as well as the larger ones. When Randy goes to visit his daughter, the reaction is fleeting; it's not overly dramatic and revelatory, like most films of this nature often create such scenes to be. We can tell by her reaction that it's not the first time Randy has attempted to reconcile with her, as she seems unfazed by his appearance on her doorstep. It is in this fashion that the film