The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke is on top-form in this depiction of fading wrestling star "Randy". Once the talk of the tour, he has fallen on hard times. His body hasn't the strength or stamina it once had and after one fairly convincing pasting in the ring he decides it is time to hang up his loincloth. Whilst his professional life was full of glamour, testosterone and showbiz, his retirement is much less so. Still needing to work, he takes a job in a supermarket and all so he can eek out a living and hopefully establish a relationship with his long estranged daughter "Stephanie" (Evan Rachel Wood). When we are in the ring, this is an action-packed and entertaining film that illustrates well just how brief these folks' moment's in the sun can be, at how fickle the audiences can be and at just how little a dilapidated body (and soul) can be left with when injury and age impose themselves. I was much less interested in the slightly contrived, and predictable, familial melodrama into which this sinks in the middle, though. I found myself really disinterested in his love life - with the unconvinced "Cassidy" (Marisa Tomei), or in his attempts to repair his torrid relationship with "Stephanie". Luckily, that is but an intermission before the grand denouement that sees him in the ultimate grudge match against his equally aged foe "the Ayatollah" (Ernest Miller). The script is lively and frequently quite witty, the direction of the fight scenes captures well the physical endurance required by these athletes, but it also shows us that their job is to entertain us - not to actually kill each other! Rourke flips from the wrestler to the tortured father well here, and the film is well worth a watch.