The Wrestler

Yes, Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei both give outstanding performances; in Rourke’s case, it was as physically risky as it was emotionally so. And yes, the movie took me into a subculture I had never seen before–that strange pseudo-sport called Pro Wrestling–which I’ll probably never look at the same way, again. These guys aren’t really competing, but they’re risking serious injury in a performance art where you don’t get to grow old gracefully. In decades of adult moviegoing, I doubt that five films had scenes that made me look away, yet The Wrestler had one such scene that seemed to go on forever. But there seemed to be something hollow inside the story that, as if writer Robert D. Siegel and director Darren Aronofsky weren’t willing to plunge in as deeply as Rourke. And the ending surprised me only in that it seemed even more cliched than I had feared.