Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Guest Movie Review... The Wrestler


Review by Fist of Fury

The Wrestler is a tragic story packaged in the form of a top notch film. Mickey Rourke's character is real. You know it. Mickey Rourke the actor is realistic. You feel it. You hurt when the wrestler hurts. This story reminds you that there are those who love what they do, and the intensity alters their DNA. Rourke's character was the champ, and the glory left him with that long lasting feeling of accomplishment.

Rourke, like some other washed up ring performers hang on in their after lives by attending meet and greets where they hope to sell tapes and pictures. It's hard to let go. These publicity events are often rude disappointments that try to leach the last drop of pride out of a has-been performer. Want to witness that emotional assassination of the wrestler's dignity while he fights desparately to rejuvenate his own illusion? It's a real fight. It's The Wrestler, the film that works. 9.0.

10 comments:

Patch man said...

I heard about this movie, and I'm thinking it's for deep thinkers and psychiatrists. Would a small town truck patch jock dig this?

R. Ebert said...

Should I go see this so I can appreciate Marisa's performance? Or, is Mickey the whole film?

Housa U. said...

It's an award winner. Does that affect your opinion?

Charte Roose said...

When will it come to the dollar red box?

Anonymous said...

Slack review. Better freshen it up with a description of the story. I like boxing movies, not El-Fake-O wrestling. Thanks just the same.

TomatoMeter said...

little trace of psychoscientific addiction imagery, hip-hop editing, or grimly elegant peeks into dreams, nightmares, and otherworlds. Comic moments are plentiful. Aronofsky's signature close-ups of faces have been replaced with ones that force themselves into wounds inflicted for visceral spectacle. Much of the time the camera floats and bobs with an observant, almost documentary-like quietness, ethereally following the wrestler as if it were his past, and the viewer may perceive vague connections to a later, lonelier, less legitimate Rocky Balboa. But Mickey Rourke isn't the Italian Stallion--he's Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a man who has spent decades slicing himself open in choreographed fights while adoring crowds roar. Pro wrestling isn't as lucrative as it was for Randy in the 1980s, but he stays at it while working menial jobs because performing isn't just the only thing he craves--it's the only thing that, at 50, he knows how to crave.

Fetzer Bontrager said...

So wordsmith attacks the Big Triple, huh?

Hand of WWW said...

VULNERABLE. Randy is Mr Vulnerable.

Anonymous said...

THE WRESTLER might be a meditation on addiction and eternal struggle

Fern Farnum said...

You failed to capture the unspoken message here. This is a story about caring. Who cares and who doesn't If the knuckles of chuckles does a review, I might be interested. Or, the knees of disease.