The Wrestler

[Stefen]

What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? Pro-wrestling? That shits for rednecks.

[Gold Trumpet]

What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? Pro-wrestling? That shits for rednecks.

I'm a pro wrestling fan and it is a bad idea. The plot pretends that wrestlers wrestle for real and the movitations are the same as in a real sport, like boxing. Movies about wrestling being real used to be made in the 1980s because not everyone knew it was fake back then. Now everyone does know and pro-wrestling has an asburd identity. The fact Arnofsky is going to try to make a drama out it will be hard to be believed. Besides, the plot sounds tired and has been done a million times before anyways.

[squints]

What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? Pro-wrestling? That shits for rednecks.

I'm a pro wrestling fan and it is a bad idea. The plot pretends that wrestlers wrestle for real and the movitations are the same as in a real sport, like boxing. Movies about wrestling being real used to be made in the 1980s because not everyone knew it was fake back then. Now everyone does know and pro-wrestling has an asburd identity. The fact Arnofsky is going to try to make a drama out it will be hard to be believed. Besides, the plot sounds tired and has been done a million times before anyways.

I doubt the plot is pretending the wrestling is real. When I was younger I was the most passionate pro-wrestling fan and one of the most fascinating things was the documentaries that showed the actual behind the scenes of the soap opera that is pro wrestling and there are a ton of sad traumatic and heartbreaking stories. These guys may be fake wrestling but they get hurt all the time. Steve Austin broke his neck. The guy who broke his neck died doing some stupid stunt. This guy named Flyin' brian used to tag team with steve austin and he broke his leg and then overdosed on pain medication. and of course there's Chris Benoit. there's a million stories of this sort of the front these steroided up guys have to put up not just pretending to fight each other. There's room between the cracks of the spectacle of it all that show the true sad and pathetic existence of these people. And it gets worse and even more degrading for those who weren't in the "big leagues" and were traveling around to VFWs and American Legions and small-backwards ass town country fairs and carnivals just trying to make a living. This story shouldn't be set in the cheesy world of wrestling from the 80s from movies like Bodyslam or No Holds Barred. I don't think it should take place in the ring at all.  I love the idea of Mickey Rourke insteand of NIc Cage (Cage could've ruined it) but that kind of sad existence is already written into every crack of Rourke's face. This could fail horribly in every way. But i think the drama is there in the real-life stories and if i had to put it up to anyone to make a decent movie out of it I'd give it to aronofsky. This could be his Raging bull. I know those are big words but I still have faith that this could work wonderfully.

[Gold Trumpet]

Looking back at the initial plot outline, you could be right about the realism factor in the film. I remembered the outline specificied that wrestling is portrayed as real in the film, but it doesn't.

The problem with the plot outline is that it could fit any fighting story. The world of professional wrestling has dramatic capabilities, but Arnofsky is going to have to take issues with the aspects of professional wrestling that make it unique. Looking at that basic two sentence synopsis, I don't see how Arnofsky will do it. He could (and I hope he does), but that synopsis will have to include a lot more. Because if he doesn't he will likely make a film that stands in line a million other boxing and fighting movies. It will be tougher to make it great.

[Alexandro]

I've met a few mexican wrestlers in my time, done a couple of interviews to them, I had one gym teacher at school who used to be a professional wrestler. None of them would ever say the words "that was fake" refering to their own wrestling. Everyone knows is a show, but once you're with them and you see them doing it, it also dawns on you is not completely fake. The hits are real, and that's why they end up completely fucked up by the end of their lives. Also, most of them don't get to be big stars, they don't get to earn that much money, from what I've gathered, most of them do it because they love it. It's a passion that drives them and keeps them on the ring despite not being the most sane, profitable thing to do. I could totally believe an ex wrestler would come back to the ring just because of pride and some sort of adrenaline rush. Some of the guys that I've met became wrestlers because family members they admire were wrestlers, or simply because they always wanted to be that. They don't care about the money that much, specially here, a non famous wrestler can make only as much as 20 dollars per fight. I don't know how it is in the US, but that's how it is here.

Another guy I met always wanted to be a soldier since he was little. He went to the military and ended up so disapointed with the level of idiocy in the mexican army that he droped out and followed his other dream, which has been his life for the last 20 years. Most of these guys can't imagine themselves doing anything else.

[pete]

I think one has to be an idiot to make a film about professional wrestling without announcing that the outcome is pre-determined.  not in a world where more kids believed in Santa than the scripted-ness of wrestling.  it seems like a sad clown story, the fool returns to the ring to entertain the crowd one more show...etc., etc.

[Gamblour.]

I guess after making the Fountain, Aronofsky's playing it safe? The whole "one last fight" crap in the synopsis is really giving me doubts. But then I trust him as a filmmaker more than any of those doubts.

[cowboykurtis]

behind the scenes - there are 3 more from same user

[MacGuffin]

[squints]

Necrobutcher sucks a fat dick!

[Stefen]

From Wikipedia, so......

Randy "Ram" Robinson (Rourke) is a retired professional wrestler from the 1980s who is forced to retire after a heart attack threatens to kill him the next time he wrestles. Robinson begins a job at a deli, moves in with an aging stripper, and attempts to form a relationship with her son. However, Robinson is drawn to the prospect of a rematch with his old wrestling nemesis the Ayatollah, even though the fight may cost him his life.[1]

haha, you gotta be fucking kidding me.

[I Love a Magician]

this is gonna be awesome

[Ghostboy]

So it's like that Simpsons episode where Homer gets shot with a cannonball. I love that episode!

I'm soooo glad they replaced Nic Cage with Mickey Rourke. He's going to be amazing in this.

[Gamblour.]

Todd McCarthy really liked it:

http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=festivals&jump=review&id=2559&reviewid=VE1117938197

The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances.

Talk about comebacks. After many years in the wilderness and being considered MIA professionally, Mickey Rourke, just like the washed-up character he plays, attempts a return to the big show in "The Wrestler." Not only does he pull it off, but Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle, although it will require deft handling by a smart distributor to overcome public preconceptions about Rourke, the subject matter and the nature of the film.

Co-produced by Wild Bunch in France, where Rourke has retained his most loyal following through thick and thin, this is nonetheless an American picture through and through, beginning with the way it strongly evokes the gritty working-class atmosphere of numerous '70s dramas. Spare but vital, and with the increasingly arty mannerisms of Aronofsky's previous work completely stripped away, the film has the clarity and simplicity of a great Hemingway short story -- there's nothing extraneous, the characters must face up to their limited options in life, and the dialogue in Robert Siegel's superior script is inflected with the poetry of the everyday.

All the same, for the first few minutes one could be excused for imagining the film was directed by Belgium's Dardenne brothers, as ace lenser Maryse Alberti's camera relentlessly follows around aging wrestler Randy "the Ram" Robinson (Rourke) from the back, concentrating on his long, dyed-blond hair and hulking body before fully revealing his mottled, puffy face. This guy is 20 years past his prime, but he's still in pretty good shape and aims to get back on top on the pro wrestling circuit.

Ram seems to have always been a big fan favorite -- he is one of their own, a fearless bruiser the white working stiffs can root for against the assorted freaks, ethnic interlopers and outright villains in this macho cartoon universe. A beguiling early scene that firmly sets the movie on its tracks shows an event's muscled participants, all warmly easygoing and chummy with one another, pairing up and discussing what moves they'll make in their matches. A similar later scene has one of the wrestlers offering Ram his choices from a laundry list of dubious-sounding pharmaceuticals.

Apart from the momentary camaraderie of his ringmates, however, Ram is alone in life. At the outset, he's also penniless, locked out of his dismal trailer home until he can pay up. He works occasionally, lugging cartons at a big-box store, and his tough-guy posture is adored by small kids, but he's got no friends and nothing to show for his strenuous efforts.

From time to time, he has a drink at a gentlemen's club, where he visits aging stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), whose days of using her body for her livelihood are similarly numbered. After getting a load of some of Ram's battle scars, Cassidy, whose real name is Pam, tells him he ought to see "The Passion of the Christ." "They threw everything at him," she says, to which Ram guesses Jesus must have been a "tough dude." Ram must confront his mortality after the film's second wrestling match, a bout so gruesome and barbarous it will force some people to look away.

Assessing his options while recovering, Ram decides to gently step up his relationship with Pam, as well as to try to reconnect with his daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), whom he hasn't seen in years. Both women have good reasons not to allow such a damaged man into their intimate lives, but even their most tentative signals of openness give Ram reason to hope for a new chapter in his life. His encounters with them are sensitively written and acted with impressive insight and delicacy, and Ram has one monologue in which he lays his feelings bare to Stephanie at a deserted old Jersey boardwalk -- "I deserve to be alone," he admits -- that is so great, one wishes it were longer.

After a stint at a deli counter that is the source of more good character humor, Ram decides to unretire and fight in a 20th-anniversary rematch of one of his most legendary bouts, "Ram vs. Ayatollah." Despite the hoopla, the way it all plays out is as far from "Rocky Balboa" as one could get, resulting in a climax that is exhilarating, funny and moving.

Shot in rough-and-ready handheld style, pic atmospherically reeks of low-rent lodgings, clubs, American Legion halls, shops and makeshift dressing rooms on the Eastern seaboard in winter (it locationed in New Jersey and Philadelphia). Stylistically, it's agile, alert and most interested in what's going on in the characters' faces.

And that is a lot. Physically imposing at 57, with a face that bespeaks untold battering and alteration, Rourke is simply staggering as Ram. The camera is rarely off him, and one doesn't want it to be, so entirely does he express the full life of this man with his every word and gesture. Ram's life has been dominated by pain in all its forms, but he's also devoted it to the one thing he loves and excels at, so he asks for no sympathy; he may have regrets, but no complaints.

As vibrant -- and as naked -- as she was in last year's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Tomei is in top, emotionally forthright form as she charts a life passage similar to Ram's, if much less extreme. Once her character stops stonewalling her father and hears him out, Wood provides a fine foil for Rourke in their turbulent scenes together. The many supporting thesps, especially the wrestling world habitues, are richly amusing and salt-of-the-earth.

[Pozer]

most anticipated blahblah