The Wrestler

Finally saw The Wrestler a couple nights ago. Let me just tell you how much I wanted to see this movie: on top of preferring art films over others, I'm a huge fan of wrestling, and it looked as if this movie was actually going to capture the spirit of wrestling in an accurate and sincere way, so I was psyched. Unfortunately, perhaps I set myself up for disappointment, because I didn't get much out of this film other than depression (it's a pretty sad story). Mickey Rourke did do a great job in the part, but I don't think this makes up for a movie telling the same old story about a guy at the end of his rope that we've heard a million times before. Sure, they changed the setting and the guy's profession, but I just didn't get much from this movie.

When looking at the list of actors competing with Rourke for the Golden Globe, I'm once again sad to see the voters going with a great performance by one person over the quality of the film as a whole (see Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood). Hell, even if I were to allow this sort of unfair bias, I still think Sean Penn should have walked home with the Golden Globe this year over Rourke. Sean Penn's performance was a performance...he actually had to don another character and personality, not simply tweaking his own real-life persona a bit (Mickey Rourke's role has been praised for how much it aligns with his own life).

Anyway, the wrestling bits were cool, Marisa Tomei was really hot, the acting was generally good, and the cinematography fit the subject matter, but there just wasn't much of a point to this film, at least not one that hadn't been stated too many times before already. Big disappointment, if you ask me; so much so that this film probably won't make it on my "Best Of" list for next year, despite how much the critics are talking it up.