The Wrestler
15, Nationwide
The Wrestler is Mickey Rourke’s big comeback movie in which he plays Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, a professional wrestler of the kind so popular in the Eighties when they all had names like ‘The Ram’ or ‘Rock’ or ‘Bad Blood’ or ‘The Hulk’ or ‘Ayatollah’ and fought under the WWF banner, which is the World Wrestling Federation rather than the World Wildlife Fund. (It’s best not to get them mixed up: you don’t want to give money for pandas only to find that, instead, it’s gone to grown men with bad hair beating the shit out of each other and who aren’t cute at all.)
Anyway, The Wrestler is less a film, more a performance; a performance for which Rourke, earlier this week, won the Golden Globe for best actor. In accepting the award he did not, as far as I know, blub, gush, or even look radiant in a Dior fishtail dress that would later be given a big tick by Heat magazine — how awful to wear one of the frocks that gets a cross; I know I’d just die! Whatever, this film is that award-winning performance, which isn’t to say it’s a joy to watch. It isn’t. Instead, The Wrestler is harrowing, unflinching, painful and brutal. Being pathetically squeamish — I recently nicked myself while chopping a tomato and passed out on the kitchen floor — this isn’t a film I’d choose to see at the cinema in a million, zillion years. On the other hand, now I’ve seen it, I’m satisfied it was the right thing to do. It was worth it, as those L’Oreal people would say, if only they went to the movies more and stayed in to eliminate fine lines and wrinkles a little less.
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