The Wrestler

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GfisAnying

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Is Mickey Rourke worth the hype?

The Wrestler takes a snapshot of a pro-wrestler in the twilight of his career. His body is stuffed, he can't pay the rent, his only family is an estranged daughter who hates him.

The main comparisons would be with Stallone's recent Rocky Balboa. A broken athlete, a 1 night comeback, problems with the love life. The movies stack alongside each other nicely - I wouldn't nominate The Wrestler for anything other than Mickey Rourke's performance, but is it truly oscar-worthy?

I will say that Rourke IS totally convincing. And perhaps that's all that's needed. It's not one of the great performances but certainly as memorable as Whitaker's Idi Amin but I'll leave the predictions until I've seen Penn (Milk) and Langella (Frost/Nixon) shake their thang.

As far as the movie goes, if you don't like violence then you might find it hard going. There's some nasty nasty scenes which far from being exploitive, truly illustrate the nature of the beast. Wrestling is tough stuff.
 
Some complete tool of a critic, in The Mail On Sunday, gave The Wrestler 2 out of 5.

He also gave Seven PounRAB 2 out of 5.

He gave Beverley Hills Chihuahua 3 out of 5. :eek:

I get the impression, he was just trying to say, "look at me - I'm a critic." What a penis.
 
I enjoyed it.

It was a bit bleak and Rourke has a car-crash face and it's difficult not to watch him.

I don't think it's Oscar-stuff but then I don't pay much attention to them anyway. It all seems a bit of insidey, cliquey, back-slapping nonsense.

The wrestlers selling their cheap tat at tiny conventions was terrible, because you just know it goes on.

Decent film.
 
I really enjoyed the film. I thought Rourke did a really good job and its good to see him back(so to say)in a really good suitable role which he obviously worked very hard for! his body was very bulked up and his wrestling skills were very good! he definitely put a lot of work into it

i enjoyed it for the fact that Rourke made me believe in the character and really feel for him and i also liked the fact it seemed like their was a camera crew following his life and made it seem very real and had a documentary feel at times!
that may just be me who felt that but that's what got me interested in the character and got my attention for what could be perceived as a slow movie!

overall very good film and excellent performance from Rourke 8/10 from me
 
You'd either have to be

a) a heavyweight moron

or

b) too young to be allowed to see The Wrestler, anyway

to not understand how the "wrestling business" works.

Beautiful film - well, in a frank & gruesome way. Hope Mickey takes the Oscar. :)
 
I thought it was a very good film. Loved the character development and how they played it so real to life. Some say its depressing and sad, but thats often the case in real life. Not everyone can be a winner.

Only part of the film I didn't like was the CZW style match with the glass, barbwire and the staple gun. Its not really a side of wrestling I care to think about or see glamourised much like backyard stuff. They should have kept it more in the keeping of ROH type matches.
 
I think "exposing the wrestling business" means the amount of drugs involved, which was in the film and people at large might not realize that.

Vince (McMahon, World Wrestling Entertainment CEO and owner) recently went before the US Senate and told them he had never seen any evidence long term steroid use was bad for you. Which was a quite staggering thing for him to say.
 
I'm pretty sure that the drugs involved were made obvious enough to the average cinemagoer.

I think Rourke gave the strongest performance of any actor in the last years worth of films - including Frost/Nixon and In Bruges.
 
I was just looking up the details of this film. I'm quite a fan of Evan Rachel Wood's films since she did Down in the Valley. Maybe i'll give it a try, a lot of reviews seem to rate it quite highly.
 
Still, it's pretty obvious when you see some of the guys involved in wrestling. You can't honestly look at someone like Scott Steiner and think "I wonder how he does it!"

And wasn't the wrestler who murdered his wife and kid on the roiRAB quite heavily? I remember reading stories putting his double homicide/suicide down to a bout of "roid rage", though I don't know how legitimate that was.
 
I enjoyed this film very much, it genuinely moved me in a way no film has in the cinema for a long time, Darren Aronofsky is just the master at creating really flawed yet relatable characters and then utterly destroying them by the end of a film. Rourke was fantastic and Marisa Tomei was great too.

My only criticisms was that the film could have benefited from a couple more father/daughter scenes to really 'earn' the scene at the beach. Also the idea that men wouldn't want to see Marisa Tomei naked because she is in her forties is quite frankly ludicrous! :p
 
Me too Histeria, watched it last night (under duress - Mr H wanted to watch it!) and was pleasantly surprised at how sucked into the movie I got - I am glad that they eased the viewer into Mickey's face - loaRAB of shots of the back of his head in the beginning, cool lighting and wide shots so that when the close ups came later I was used to his features and they became much less of an issue that I first believed they would be. Nice story quite well told with, what I would consider to be a very fine performance from Mickey Rourke - a solid 7/10
 
He obviously had a complete psychotic break for some reason or other. Any link to steroiRAB will always be conjecture.

Now the link to heart failure - which has killed many wrestlers - is pretty irrefutable.
 
It didn’t live up to the hype for me, above average but nothing more. I really don’t see why people are calling it amazing. The storyline is fairly simple, the relationship with the daughter was very obvious, it was nothing special.
 
How are you watching it may I ask, as it isn't released in cinemas until next Friday? ;)

I hope Aronofsky doesn't mess up RoboCop in 2010. If he does, I'll come looking for him.

Paddy :D
 
I saw it last week. I've loved all of Aronofsky's films, particularly Requiem for a Dream, and while I thought The Wrestler was good and I really enjoyed it, I didn't think it was amazing. The daughter part of the plot was bit shoehorned-in, I thought, but Rourke's performance was brilliant all the same. The monologue at the end was especially powerful.
 
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