While I won’t address whether I was, at one time, a closet wrestling fan, I will say that I looked with great anticipation to viewing Mickey Rourke’s career-defining role as Randy “The Ram” Robinson (aka Robin Ramzinski). A wrestling giant in the 1980s, The Ram’s celebrity status has taken a nose dive and he’s left to grocery warehouse work with independent wrestling ventures on the weekends. We see him mocked by his day-job manager, locked out of his trailer until he scrapes together rent, and reeling from the pain of past and present injuries. He’s a regular at a local strip club, where he pursues one dancer in particular, an aging stripper with whom we see he’s fallen in love. Played by Marisa Tomei, the stripper switches back and forth from her “Cassidy” persona to her inner “Pam” when she steps outside the confines of the club. She hints at a deep affection for Randy as well, although she has a fear of commitment.
After a particularly gruesome wrestling match, Randy suffers a heart attack, which results in bypass surgery. He’s told to stop his steroid usage, and that wrestling is no longer possible. A visit with Pam reminds him that the most important thing in life is his personal relationships, particularly with his estranged daughter Stephanie (played by Evan Rachel Wood). He seeks to heal those wounds, as well as to draw closer to Pam. Although he makes gains, several setbacks eventually lead him to throw in the towel in his personal life and crawl back into the ring for a rematch with the Ayatollah, the opponent in one of the biggest fights of his career. The culmination of a lifetime of disappointments in the last 20 minutes of the film makes “The Wrestler” an incredibly moving experience. I’ve always enjoyed the wrestling speeches made prior to a fight, and this one is exceptional in both depth and candor.
Parts of this film made me giggle girlishly at his effeminate hygiene practices: shaving his pits, dyeing his roots and visiting the tanning bed in his white cotton briefs. (Hot? Well, the ringside spandex is more attractive.) While brutally realistic, the wrestling scenes were almost too much to handle, with the chair-throwing, glass-breaking, staple-gun-utilizing mayhem that’s left off Monday night cable networks. I’m not one to lament two grown men who consciously choose to beat the shit out of each other, but the props were rather grotesque. The wrestlers’ discussions of what to anticipate in the ring from each other are fascinating, proving ONCE AND FOR ALL that wrestling is fake…and yet the pain depicted by Randy is so terribly real.
Like you didn’t already know–Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood take the craft of acting to an entirely new plane in this film. I found myself both hating Randy and loving him, pitying him, wishing he’d back out of his last match, yet hoping against hope he’d reign in the ring once again. Strippers usually don’t garner much interest from me in films, but Marisa Tomei demands that we not look away, commanding the audience’s attention past the superficial and creating empathy for a woman who has much more depth than a tattooed waif in a thong. Evan Rachel Wood as the daughter left behind when The Ram stepped into the limelight drives home the personal repercussions of choosing oneself over one’s family. Sometimes, wounds don’t heal–one of the key points of the entire film, exhibited in a myriad of ways.
What can I say? I would like to have his action figure.
Special Features:
* Within the Ring
A behind-the-scenes look at the struggle to develop the story and put the film into production. As a low-budget film, the producers decided to stay away from licensing issues and instead delve into independent wrestling ventures. All of the matches depicted in the film were actual events! Rock on.
* “The Wrestler” music video—written and performed by Bruce Springsteen
Incredibly beautiful song that captures the essence of The Ram’s spirit like only The Boss can do.