The Wrestler (2008)

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Country: USA
Genre: Independent, Drama

“I’m a professional wrestler.”
“That’s probably not a good idea.”

Darren Aronofsky has taken a step away from his usual high stylized films to have an affair with cinema verite in The Wrestler. It’s hyper realistic, all down to the last emotion of which it has plenty. Rourke blazes like a phoenix out of the ashes of his old career in what is certainly going to be the performance of his lifetime, and of most people’s lifetimes, (matched only by maybe De Niro’s LaMotta.) To say the experience of watching this film is ‘tough’ is selling it short, both in that it can get excruciating and that the ‘toughness’ isn’t without merit. It all pays off, even if it’s not in the ways we’d wish it to. The Wrestler can stand with the best of tragedies in all of drama. It’s almost hard to believe that there was a screenwriter behind it. The only non-realistic thing is, and excuse my chauvinism for a moment, that anyone wouldn’t find Marisa Tomei attractive. I’ll save you the George Costanza monologue, but come on.