Updated 04/20/2009 04:11 PM
EW DVD Review: "The Wrestler"
By: Chris Nashawaty - Entertainment Weekly
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After years of abuse and neglect, Mickey Rourke's face looks like an old catcher's mitt that's been left out in the rain. But, it turns out to be the actor's secret weapon in "The Wrestler."
Just out on DVD, "The Wrestler" is a devastating portrait of a past-his-prime grappler named Randy "The Ram" Robinson who's been reduced to doing staged, but no less brutal, pantomime in the ring for chump change. Twenty years past his hey day, The Ram is reduced to performing in front of small crowds in sad, small-time arenas for fans who hunger to watch him bleed in tights.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the guy behind 2000's bleak-but-brilliant "Requiem for a Dream," "The Wrestler" nails all of the tiny details: the dumb-fun hair metal music on the soundtrack, the flea-bag trailer park The Ram calls home, and the even more depressing day job at a supermarket deli counter he takes on to make ends meet.
And, in addition to the redemption he tries to find in the ring, there's the salvation he struggles to find outside of it. There's the now-grownup daughter played by Evan Rachel Wood, who has little interest in patching things up with him, and the stripper played by Marissa Tomei, who's hesitant to start up a relationship with one of her customers, even if The Ram's heart seems to be in the right place.
But don't be mistaken, "The Wrestler" is Rourke's show from beginning to end. As an actor, Rourke was a star in the early 1980s; with "Diner," "The Pope of Greenwich Village," and "9 ½ Weeks," he seemed set to become the next Marlon Brando or Robert DeNiro.
But then he threw his career and his good looks away. That remorse is in every scene of "The Wrestler." So much so, that by the end you've forgotten whether you're rooting for The Ram's comeback or Rourke's own. Either way, it's a knockout.
Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in "Bride Wars," Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson play bickering bridezillas; in "JCVD," Jean-Claude Van Damme satirizes his own Muscles from Brussels reputation; and in "The Hit," Stephen Frears' classic 1984 British caper gets a deluxe Criterion edition.