Give It a Wrestle

In retrospect, I probably should not have watched The Wrestler in such close proximity to Crazy Heart. The two are very similar movies. Both tell the story of a has-been celebrity now struggling to get by, and saddled with the troubles of the hard lives they've led. I'm no more a fan of wrestling than I am of country music, so there really wasn't any better chance I'd like this movie better than the other.

But again, I suppose my curiosity was piqued by the praise heaped on the lead performer -- again, like Crazy Heart. In this case, the film was lauded as Mickey Rourke's "comeback movie," and again, the lead actor was nominated for an Oscar. (Though unlike Jeff Bridges, Mickey Rourke did not win.)

Again, the lesson I should take away from this is that one celebrated performance should not be enough to get me to watch a movie about a subject that otherwise does not appeal to me. That said, I did find The Wrestler the better film of the two. Where the protagonist of Crazy Heart feels more like he has made his own bed, the man at the heart of The Wrestler is in a rough situation that seems through little fault of his own. He's a man with a passion that others do not understand or share. That passion has destroyed his body, leaving him with serious problems... and essentially makes it all the more impossible for anyone around him to understand why he has to keep at it. Basically, this character is easier to empathize with; while many of us (fortunately) have not had to battle addiction, most of us are familiar with this lesser version of it -- a sort of infatuation that others may or may not share.

Still, the plot is typical sports movie fare. Athlete fights through people telling him he "can't," believing that he "can." Boring stuff, frankly. Mickey Rourke does give a fine performance (as does Marisa Tomei), but it's all in service of a movie that we've essentially seen many times before (though without the trappings of wrestling). I rate it a C-.