The Wrestler (2008)
Aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson is long past his prime but still ready and rarin' to go on the pro-wrestling circuit. After a particularly brutal beating, however, Randy hangs up his tights, pursues a serious relationship with a long-in-the-tooth stripper, and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. But he can't resist the lure of the ring and readies himself for a comeback.
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To me, this movie is perfection.
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
While Mickey Rourke gives a spectacular and realistic performance of a former celebrity down on his luck, the film wasn't that compelling to me. It felt like I was watching someone else's home movies at certain parts. Maybe I was just expecting too much with all the buzz surrounding it.
There is nothing startlingly original here. The story of a has-been hanging on to past glory has been done a million times, and here it's largely constructed with stock characters ... a stripper with a heart of gold, an alienated daughter ... we've seen it before. What makes this gem stand out is the remarkable lead performance by Rourke ... among other things, one of the best physical performances I have seen in a drama ... his amazing supporting cast (Marisa Tomei in particular), and Aronofsky's surprisingly restrained, realistic treatment of the material.
The Wrestler is like a newspaper story made into a movie: "Old, dirty, drug-abusing wrestler gets a second chance. Ruins it because he's a selfish idiot". A waste of talent, time and money.It's just a meaningless movie with an unlikeable main character (not that the other characters are saints either). It's strange world we live in, where people want to see movies about jerks who do drugs, sleep around, fail their loved ones and destroy their lives. That depressing garbage like The Wrestler called art by some is also a mystery (well, not really...these days, taking a crap in public makes you an artistic genius).Someone already did the unlikeable loser ruins everything-stuff many years ago in a Swedish silent movie called "The Phantom Carriage", but they did it the right way. That movie is also dark and ugly in parts, but doesn't resort to profanity and pointless nudity to tell the story. It didn't have a stupid ending either. Or you could just watch Santo in the Wax Museum instead...
I'm not a fan of wrestling (let alone sports) but I enjoy a good sports movie and The Wrestler is up there with some of my favourite sports movies ever. It tells the simple yet touching story of an aging professional wrestler who was big in the 80s but now past his prime. Then after suffering a heart attack, he reluctantly retires from wrestling and tries to adjust to normality by working in a deli counter, forming a relationship with a stripper and even trying to bond with his estranged daughter. In my opinion, The Wrestler is the best sports movie since the first Rocky movie. It even got praised from other professional wrestlers as well. And I'm glad that Mickey Rourke won both a B.A.F.T.A. Film Award and a Golden Globe for his portrayal as Randy "The Ram" but I'm surprised he didn't get an Oscar because this was the performance of his career. And I'm also surprised The Wrestler was only nominated for two Oscars. If you ask me, it should've been given more nominations like Best Director, Best Original Song or even Best Picture because it's one of the best movies of 2008.