Title: The Wrestler Director: Darren Aronofsky Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood Aspect Ratio: 2.35.1 Studio: Fox Searchlight Genre(s): Drama Rated:       (For violence, sexuality/nudity, language and some drug use)   Buy From Amazon.com: DVD / BluRay / Soundtrack / Soundtrack (MP3) / "The Wrestler" by Bruce Springsteen (Theme From "The Wrestler") [MP3]

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents, there is lots of foul language, violent wrestling scenes, and graphic nudity. Not for children. Recommended for ages 17 and up.

Sometimes life deals you a rough blow. In the case of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke in an Oscar nominated role) he’s been dealt several. First of all, he’s a wrestler. Wrestling may be fake, but it does require lots of skill to perform to a satisfying degree. After one particularly brutal show (which involves nails and barbed wire), he has a heart attack and is told that he can’t fight anymore. But if he can’t fight anymore, what does he really have? There is no wife in the picture. His daughter hates him after he abandons her one too many times. He has fallen in love with a stripper named Pam (Marisa Tomei in an Oscar nominated role), who he wants to have a relationship with, but she doesn’t date customers. Considering that they are both trying to hold onto their glory days the match should be perfect.

So one hand “The Wrestler” is about a broken man. Or so people want me to believe. But this I can not accept. I’ve seen movies about broken men, and this ain’t one of them. No, this is a movie about a man who finds happiness in one aspect of his life: His wrestling. To have that taken away from him would be like telling a man to find a new wife after his old one of twenty years just died. It’s difficult, and it’s that emotion I connected with when I watched Randy in his life. He makes his part-time job at the supermarket a full-time one, where he ends up behind the meat counter. He tries to make his job more interesting by being friendly with the customers, but they do not share his enthusiasm, and soon he just spends day counting down minutes on the clock.

Originally Nicolas Cage was up to play the lead in this movie, but he stepped aside when director Darren Aronofsky expressed keen interest in casting Mickey Rourke in the lead. The studios didn’t want to back him though, feeling Rourke was washed out and done for. Aronofsky saw something in Rourke though, and eventually won that argument. Once I saw this movie I think I know what that something was: Personal experience. Actors can pull out all these tricks to immerse themselves in a role they are playing, but sometimes the best acting comes from someone who’s been there before. Rourke has always been a small Hollywood player, not really interested in the big life. He himself even left Hollywood at one point to focus on his wrestling career, and there’s rumors he plans to go back to that life if he wins the Best Actor Oscar this year.

This is understandable, as wrestlers tend to want to leave the game at the top of their form, so applying this mentality to his acting career is the likely result of this choice. When people see the poster for this movie chances are they’ll think it’s a movie about a big fight or a fairy tale like “Rocky.” What this movie really is though is about a man who knows what makes him happy the most and having that thing taken away from him. At the end he’ll come to a big realization, and in a tearful speech he leaves the audience in tears as he gives his fans, who are his true family, the greatest farewell gift he can. I may find wrestling to be a lousy sport, but this movie is far from lousy.