The Wrestler

Washed up fighters make great movie characters. Think of Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, Marlon Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” speech in On The Waterfront, Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby and Stacy Keach, pissing blood in John Huston’s underrated Fat City.

Add to their ranks Randy “The Ram” Robinson. The Ram isn’t a boxer, but he’s played by one: Mickey Rourke boxed before he became an actor, and went back to the ring in the early 90s, when he went undefeated in seven professional bouts before retiring to lick his wounds.

Director Darren Aronofsky makes us wait before we can see his face. First of all we get glimpses of The Ram’s glory days, press clippings from the late 80s when he was in his prime. Then we see him from the back, sitting on a stool in the corner of a nursery class – like a dunce. He’s reduced to fighting in school gyms now. His hair is long and rinsed blonde, reaching down below his shoulders; his arms and chest are bodybuilder pumped… But the face, when we do see it, is bloated and battle-scarred, his skin waxy, his eyes in retreat. Rourke’s once beautifully chiseled features seem to have lost all their definition.

It’s enough to make you cry – or it would be, if Rourke didn’t imbue this guy with so much of the old charm and charisma. Randy is still fighting the good fight, still dreaming the dream despite everything that happens in a movie that’s structured as a long-delayed wake up call.

Aronofsky has been through the wars himelf, of course. Since the acclaim that came his way with Requiem for a Dream he’s suffered numerous setbacks on The Fountain, losing Brad Pitt late in day and most of his budget, then suffering calamitous reviews and lukewarm business.

Maybe it was good for him. There is something humble and back-to-basics about this film – he covers it in long, unbroken shots, documentary style. It is a very clean, simple, approach, but it packs a real emotional wallop.

Aronofsky is mostly sympathetic to the sham wrestling racket, which he presents as an extremely punishing branch of show business. The results may be pre-arranged, but the bouts themselves involve self-laceration and blood-letting. The Ram learns the hard way that he can’t keep fighting forever, but his options remain severely circumscribed in a country still hooked on its own fixation with youth and glory. (Not for nothing is Randy’s climactic bout a rematch with his old 80s adversary, The Ayatollah.)

The same could be said of Cassidy, the aging stripper played by Marisa Tomei who doesn’t quite know what to make of her most loyal customer. She’s a single mom who still looks the part but knows her days are numbered. Randy is obviously a sweet guy, but he’s not exactly the knight on a white charger who is going to solve her problems and whisk her to the sweet life.

A subplot about Randy trying to reconnect with his angry daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) is fairly hackneyed – except that we probably all know feckless, well-meaning fathers who would like their kids’ forgiveness, but louse it up anyway.

The Wrestler is a poignant slice of bar room blues transported to a whole other level by Mickey Rourke, the right actor in the right place at the right time. Talk of an Oscar nomination is absolutely justified. This could prove to be his indelible performance, the role of a lifetime you might say.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com