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> The Wrestler |
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Staring:
Mickey Rourke,
Marisa Tomei,
Evan Rachel Wood
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $4.96
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: ROURKE,MICKEY
EAN: 0024543574996
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Fox Searchlight
Manufacturer: Fox Searchlight
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Fox Searchlight
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2009-04-21
Running Time: 109
Studio: Fox Searchlight
Theatrical Release Date: 2008 |
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Product Description
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 21-APR-2009
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com
The mystery of Mickey Rourke's career comes to a grungy apotheosis in The Wrestler, the much-battered actor's triumphant return to the top rope. He plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a heavily scarred and medicated battler who's twenty years past his best moment in the ring. But he still schleps to every second-rate fight card he can get to, stringing out the paychecks (more likely a fistful of cash) and nursing what's left of his pride. His attempts to adjust to a more normal kind of life form the most absorbing sections in the movie, whether it's flirting with a stripper (Marisa Tomei is in good form, in every sense), establishing a bond with his understandably angry daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), or working behind the deli counter at a nondescript megastore. Rourke is commanding in the role; he obviously spent hours in the gym and the tanning salon, and his ease with the semi-documentary style adopted by director Darren Aronofsky allows him to naturalistically interact with the colorful real-life wrestlers who crowd the movie's ultra-believable locations. All of which helps distract from the film's overall adherence to ancient formula. You might find yourself waiting for the scene where the risk-taking Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) pulls the switch and reveals his true motives for pursuing this otherwise sentimental story, but there's no switch. The Wrestler is an old-fashioned hoke machine, given grit by an actor who doesn't seem to be so much performing the role of ravaged survivor as embodying it. --Robert Horton
Stills from The Wrestler (Click for larger image)
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A Cinematic Classic about Wrestling with Real Life. We'll be talking about this Movie 30 Years From Now., 2010-08-21
Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is a no-holds-barred story about life in and out of the ring. A powerful story that transcends the sports entertainment and makes a powerful commentary about relationships and the human condition, The Wrestler is one of the great films of the 21st century.
The Wrestler tells the story of Randy "The Ram" Robinson a wrestling superstar in the 1980's. Twenty years later, he's a middle-aged man living out of a trailer in New Jersey and working at a supermarket packing boxes on weekdays and independent wrestling shows at V.F.W halls on the weekends. His life is a sad, lonely existence and outside of wrestling he has very little connection to anyone save for Cassidy, an aging stripper he's trying to court. His existence is working and scraping up enough money to pay his rent, tanning sessions, and steroids to maintain his wrestling career, working towards a participating in a match celebrating the 20th Anniversary between him and the Ayatollah, now a used car salesman. He's doing okay until a brutal hardcore match with Necro Butcher. In the aftermath of that match, Randy suffers a heart attack that changes his life.
Years of wear and tear in the ring and drug abuse have caught up with Randy. Told by his doctor he can no longer wrestle, he must figure out a new way to make a life. After begging his surly boss (a powerful contrast from the supportive wrestling promoters who beg him for work), He works at the deli counter at the Supermarket. It's a painful and powerful contrasting visual as he makes his entrance into the Supermarket deli counter, one that symbolizes Randy's entrance into the real world.
Taking Cassidy's advice and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter Stephanie. His efforts are rebuffed at first by Stephanie, but she does re-establish her connection with her father and promises to have dinner with her. However, when Cassidy rejects his advances and an opportunity at a serious relationship that night, Randy's world falls apart. Feeling lonely and hurt, Randy goes to a wrestling show to reconnect with wrestlers and wrestling fans, the only people he feels care about him, has and wild night with a female fan. As he returns home and falls asleep, he misses his dinner with Stephanie and she cuts him out of his life permanently. Recognized by a fan at the Deli counter and belittled by his boss, Randy not only quits his job, but gives up on life as well.
Rejected by the real world and the real people closest to him, a despondent Randy decides to return to the only place he feels he's loved: The ring. He books the match with the Ayatollah for no pay because it's the only thing he has to live for.
A man with nothing to lose and no connection to anyone or anything, Randy goes on to his final match with the Ayatollah. While Cassidy makes one last effort to reconnect Randy to the real world, he brushes her off. A hopeless and despondent Randy goes on to perform his last match with the Ayatollah. As the screen cuts to black before he comes off the top rope for the Ram Jam, the audience is left pondering if this is his last match or his last day living.
The Wrestler is a classic. I love the storytelling in this film; it gives us a brilliant insight into the wrestling business and how wrestling matches work. The writing in this film is reminiscent of Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling's early work, a social commentary about the human condition wrapped up in an entertaining story. Randy the Ram Robinson isn't just wrestling in the ring, he's a man wrestling with his own mortality and maintaining his connection to a world that has forgotten him. Outside of the ring he's a lost soul; we see how much the world that has passed him by in the scene where he's playing Nintendo with a young boy who talks about Call of Duty 4. It's like his entire world ended in 1985, from his clothes to the beat-up Dodge Ram Van he drives, he's a relic from another era trying to understand a world and people that have changed while he was grappling in the ring.
Director Darren Aronofsky's crafts a cinematic masterpiece filled with beautiful, moving visuals. Utilizing a pseudo-documentary style, Aronofsky's visuals give Randy's story grit, texture and a sense of realism. I didn't feel like I was watching a movie, I felt like I was watching real life transpiring in front of me. There are some shots that are incredibly powerful; the scenes with the old wrestlers at the convention in wheelchairs is one of the most moving pieces of film I've seen in years. We take for granted how much these athletes entertain us, and take no mind to what happens to them when they leave the ring.
The acting here is some of the best I've seen. Mickey Rourke gives the performance of his career in The Wrestler. This is Rourke's signature role, the one he will be known for generations to come. I feel he was ROBBED of an Oscar; Sean Penn needs to pack that statue and Fed Ex it to Rourke NOW. Onscreen Rourke disappears and becomes Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Evan Rachel Wood steals scenes as Rourke's Daughter Stephanie. Her emotions are so powerful in this film; I could feel her pain and hurt coming off the screen. I'm also wondering why she wasn't nominated for supporting actress Oscar; she was perfect in this film. Marisa Tomei is moving as Cassidy, she adds a graceful humanity to her character making us see the hardworking woman trying to make a living to take care of her family. Todd Barry Gives a solid supporting role As Wayne, the prickly supermarket manager.
The Wrestler is Shawn James Five-Star Essential DVD. It's a 21st Century Cinematic Classic; a film we'll be talking about for years to come like Sunset Boulevard and Marty, and The Hustler.
 Despite Mickey Rourke's physical decay over the years, his acting is still top notch, 2010-08-02
If you've ever seen "Fade to Black" (Fade to Black (Ws Coll)) with Dennis Christopher of "Breaking Away" and "It" fame, you know what a cruddy, third-rate movie it is. What you might also have noticed in that viewing, however, is a young Mickey Rourke who, despite a small part, clearly outshines his acting compadres. And so it has always been with Mr. Rourke, from "Body Heat" to "Year of the Dragon" to "Fall Time" to "Domino" to "Sin City." Regardless of what's going on with him personally, he's always great professionally.
Granted, Rourke is America's poster boy for bad living, but that only helps make his role in "The Wrestler" more convincing. He plays the role of aging professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (his first name is actually "Robin"), twenty years past his prime, living in a New Jersey trailer park, estranged from his daughter and with no caring connections in the real world.
In fact, the whole movie might be said to be about what's real and what's fake and, regardless, does living in one versus the other matter, especially if one (the real) is more painful than the other (the fake).
Marisa Tomei is quite fetching in her turn as the stripper love interest of Rourke's character. Comedian Todd Barry also stars as Randy's boss at the supermarket.
Great film.
Great, 2010-09-01
The Wrestler is the vehicle for Rourke to shine on. It's a film that claws and earns its way to greatness. Perhaps the worst thing is the film is the nearly unreadable font of the opening credits, but after that, it's all excelsior. It's small moments remind me of The Jimmy Show, a terrific, and similarly unsentimental, 2001 film that got as much indifference as this film got hype. Both films are unafraid to show life's unpretty side, but neither film buys into the false heroics of Hollywood endings, nor the false travails of more melodramatic `indy' films. It also piques one to envision what a truly adult film by the hit and miss director Kevin Smith would be like, since his films are all set in New Jersey, with blue collar folk, as well.
Randy `The Ram' Ramzinsky is what his daughter claims, a screw-up. But, he realizes it. So many of the characters in films, and people in real life, delude themselves into thinking they are things they are not. And it is this sort of strength that makes the film an `adult' film, not Tomei's nudity (watch the scene where Randy heads down from the supermarket bathroom to enter the deli box, pauses, with the blare of a pro wrestling entrance theme playing, breathes, then enters to the silence of mundane work). More of this is needed. Perhaps Darren Aronofsky, if he's learnt the lessons of this film, can pick up the gauntlet that John Cassavetes tossed down a few decades ago, but which remains on American cinema's floor. If not, at least here's hoping he does not return to his earlier ways. If, instead of navel gazing masturbatory philosophy, a dose of blue collar realism (and no sport is more blue collar than pro wrestling) can work wonders for an artist like Aronofsky, imagine what it can do for the blue collars that watch it. Go ahead, try it, for a change!
Best movie of 2009, 2010-07-21
Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" is not only Mickey Rourke's best performance, it is also the director's best film to date--which means something if one looks back on the one time obscure masterpiece "Pi" and the gruelling exploration of drug addicton "Requiem For A Dream".
Rourke plays burnt out, washed up wrestler "Randy the Ram" who is so addicted to the adrenaline high of professional wrestling--which actually takes more of a toll on the men involved than the deceptive cartoonish appearance of the sport would suggest--and takes on a tour of a lonely hell of has beens, crippled veterans of the ring, and the cruel lengths to which men will go to propagate the illusion of machismo for the viewing pleasure of pot bellied men and women who view them as invincible demi-gods of some sort.
Randy is a man who has spent his life pleasing the Abstract Other--millions of Americans who rode on the high hog of the 1980's until that decade graciously ended and brought the authenticity of Nirvana or as Randy says in one of his more "insensitive" moments about the change in decade and atmosphere: "Then that Cobain p*ssy had to come and ruin everything!" In the ring he is a flaming giant, recalling the "Rockers" group I remember from watching Professional Wrestling as a child with neon green under arm straps, a warlike viking pair of "shorts", and greasy blonde hair which he continually tosses about in an arrogance which is all too easily seen through as the insecurity of a basically nice guy who is completely lost in the real world.
Marisa Tomei plays his "partner", sort of, an aging stripper who like Randy has lost the balance between reality and illusion. While her real name is Pam her "strip name" is Cassidy. These two broken human beings are straight out of a Bukowski poem, only with a bit more hope: watch for the interesting commentary on "The Passion of The Christ" as Tomei recites a passage from Isaiah and looks at Randy, realizing he is also a sort of Christlike figure, even willing to get a staple gun put in his chest by a young man just starting out to give him his name in the sport. He just wants to make people happy and goes about doing it in all the wrong ways. The cinematography gives the feel of lower-middle class New Jersey with a stinking authenticity: after suffering a heart attack, Randy is forced to take a good look at his life and is no longer able to wrestle. With mortality looming he makes an attempt to reconcile with his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), who he simply never had time for during his period in the limelight.
Wood gives perhaps the weakest performance in what is otherwise a nearly perfect film. She pouts so much, looks so drawn and pale that one gets the impression she is trying to communicate the trauma of abandonment by her father a little too much. And it's a little too perfect within terms of the plotline that she is a lesbian with an African American girlfriend: gee, could that have something to do with her rebellion against her Alphamale father and his cult of manly manliness? This is the only weakness in the movie.
The ending is not suicide. It is not just despair on Ram's part or a desire to die, as many seem to believe. With all his attempts at real human connection failed, he makes the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of his fans after delivering a speech which is really his epitaph. He undergoes (I have no doubt Aronofsky was studying Gibson's technique on "The Passion" while making this film) gruelling physical suffering, and his physical prowess is just enough to please his fans as he suffers a massive heart attack in act of penance and passion. Simply an incredible movie which words cannot describe. Unreservedly recommended.
Very Good Movie!, 2010-08-29
This turned out to be an outstanding movie. The star of the movie Mickey Rourke gave a stunning perfor mance. He
plays the role of Randy "The Ram" Robinson. He used to be a headline star of the wrestling world in his younger days. He drew top dollar and starred in main events. His life was good. Now the toll of punishment in an out of the ring have caught up with him. He cannot afford to pay his rent in a run down trailer park. He is employed in a grocery store making a meager living. His family has disowned him. His daughter wants nothing to do with him. His potentiak girlfriend a stripper does not want to fool with him. He is literaly at the end of his road. A potential financial windfall presents. His promoters want to stage a rmatch between him and "The Ayatollah". But in the meantime he has developed heart trouble. The rematch is signed. The movie ends and you will be left wondering what happened to the "Ram". Be sure to see this movie.
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