The Wrestler: Bloody matchless

February 18, 5:55 PMPortland Movie ExaminerIan Sawyer

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Randy “The Ram” Robinson is about as broken a man as you can find. 20 years past the heyday of his wrestling career, The Ram is bloated, scarred, and bankrupt. This could also describe the career of actor Mickey Rourke, who plays The Ram as close to the heart as any performer in any role in recent memory. Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler is, perhaps, the most perfect pairing of realism and fiction that Hollywood can produce. So visceral, raw, and ugly is this film, that one scene induced a seizure for an unprepared moviegoer during the viewing that I attended. 

Aronofsky’s style is jarring and unsettling—that is to say, effective. A barebones handheld camera is usually following Randy around, his back to the audience as he goes through his daily and nightly gigs: a shift at the super market, starring in a wrestling match at the VWF hall, a beer at the strip club, locked out of his trailer at the trailer park, popping pain killers before sleeping in the van, and so on. Through these somber, bleak scenes we get to know The Ram in all his faded glory. He is a kind, generous hulk of a man-child who has never let go of the hair-metal days of the late 80’s. A nostalgic soundtrack with the likes of Cinderella, Ratt, Quiet Riot, and Guns ‘n Roses keeps the movie feeling like a party that we’re all sadly late for. And the party is a small one. Randy’s only acquaintances are the handful of fans that show up to his dismally low-budget matches, the wrestlers he both respects and beats on, and an aging stripper, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), who’s parallel career is almost as tired as Randy’s. 

After suffering a medical setback (as if he needed another), The Ram is forced into retirement. And for a while, this is almost a good thing. He gains time—time to fill the lonely voids in his life that were left while he was king of the ring. But he’s ill equipped at doing so. Randy seems intent on picking up baggage where others are trying to ditch theirs. We cringe as he attempts to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). And we squirm as he tries to woo Pam (Cassidy’s real name and persona). Still, Rourke lends a quiet, disarming softness to The Ram that renders these women, and the audience, helpless to his heartbroken charm. We root for him to get up off the mat when he’s most bloody and beaten down. 

Amongst New Jersey’s gritty, broken down environs, Randy comes close to soaring, even without wrestling. But, alas, he is too much of a piece of meat to have wings. Nothing will ever substitute the pain and drama that he’s endured for the fans. Not being able to stick it out as a civilian, Randy runs back into the arms of wrestling because of a masochistic need to perform. In the end, even The Ram knows that all he was ever cut out for was flying off the top rope. As the audience, we are happy to see him get back up there…even knowing it very well could be his last leap.