Friday, February 27, 2009

The Wrestler

The story about a huge superstar wrestler from the 1980's who twenty years later is struggling just to make the rent for his trailer.  Truly an emotionally moving movie, especially for each and everyone of those indy wrestlers out there who bust their ass each and every day to put on a great performance in the local high school gym.  Their were some really good scenes in this movie including the trip to the dollar store to buy random objects to use as weapons in matches.  I'm thinking to myself "Hey!  I've done that exact same thing!"  I was surprised at the exposure they gave to CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling) a promotion based on the east coast.  Necro Butcher played Randy The Ram Robinson's Opponent in a brutal hardcore match which has been CZW's staple over the years. Not only is The Ram working shows on the weekends, he has to work a deli counter during the week just to make it by and sometimes even that's not enough as he's sleeping in his Van on some nights.  Ernest Miller plays The Ayatollah who is The Ram's biggest opponent and who sold out Madison Square garden in 1989.  Twenty years later, The Rematch occurs.
Mickey Rourke's performance in The Wrestler is excellent. Maybe it's because I'm a huge wrestling fan but this movie left me wanting a bit more.

 There were a bunch of sub-plot storylines that they could have gone into including his interaction with Marissa Tomei's character. However I don't think that is what this movie was about. Darren Aronofsky was going more for showing everyday people the difficulty of a Professional Wrestler and that even though Wrestling is scripted and storylines are carried out, Professional Wrestling is far from "Fake".  From that stand point,  this movie delivers.
I recommend this one to anyone.
8/10
And now I will await Wangberg's way more in depth review of The Wrestler.

No comments:

Post a Comment