Eye Candy #133 - "The Wrestler"

The Wrestler: While I do have a history of enjoying the scripted shenanigans of colorful, larger-the-life characters in tights, I also like wrestling. Ba-da-bump! Thank you, tip your waitress! Mickey Rourke is Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a former superstar past his prime and sliding inexorably toward ruin. Once a fixture on the national stage, he is now relegated to running weekend matches in small towns in New Jersey, surrounded by a younger generation of men that worship him but that he can barely compete with, hocking memorabilia at has-been conventions. His joints are broken, his heart fails him, and his “sport” is moving on to the extreme matches involving barbed wire and staple guns and the like. His parental relations are in ruins, with a daughter who hates him. He loves a stripper (Marisa Tomei) who refuses to return his love, and all his attempts at normalcy outside the ring end largely in disaster. But when he’s in the ring, he’s whole. Exceedingly well acted and crafted by Darren Aronofsky, and certainly more accessible than his “The Fountain”. Filmed in a quasi-film/documentary style, Rourke is darn near unrecognizable as Randy (though to put things in their perspective, Rourke’s made a career out of playing broken men looking for their shot at salvation, redemption, and the like). His supporting cast is solid, including Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, and a host of real wrestlers (particularly Ernie “The Cat” Miller, as “The Ayatollah”, Randy’s ‘nemesis’ from his heyday). Not a flattering portrayal of “Life after”, and there are several documentaries that echo these same stories. Ending is ambiguous (on the verge of a heart attack, Randy does his signature move, the Ram Jet, as the camera fades to black), lots of nudity, but a very watchable film. Rourke should have won the Oscar. Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”