Customer Reviews
A surprisingly entertaining and moving film. - By: Hollie, 01 Aug 2010 
I have to admit to being put off this by the overwhelming critical hype. Quite often when I pick up a DVD with 5 star ratings all over the cover all I get when watching it is disapointment. And though I may not agree with the 5 star ratings this film so proudly lists on it's case, I at least understand why it has been awarded them.
The Wrestler is shotin a gritty, slightly documentary style. The acting throughout is absoultely fantastic & the fights are extremely brutal. The soundtrack is top notch. Though I wasn't particularly interestedin seeing this I found myself fairly gripped throughout. I became attached to "The Ram" & suffered with him, Mickey Rourke has here given the performance of a life time.
Fans of wrestling may find their opinion of the sport somewhat marred by the honesty of this film. And to be absolutely truthful I have no idea what kind of viewer I should recommend this to, after all it's not your typical drama. Nor is it a regular sports movie.
Good but not the film of the year - By: DaveW, 08 Jun 2010 
I liked this because it is gritty & believable. Rourke & Tomei both putin good performances but neither of their characters were sufficiently well developed to generate any real empathy for. Sure, the wrestling scenes are remarkable and, at times, hard to watch but I am not sure how this became "film of the year". Must have been a slow year, I guess.
A word about the director: Darren Aronofsky has made one or two good movies ("Requiem for a Dream" is stunning) but "The Fountain" over-reaches itself & "Pi" is hard to fathom. If you are buying this because you like the director, it stands up as one of his better films but it is not particularly arty or abstract like his earlier work, so you may be disappointed.
A must-see but not a perfect film. - By: DVDfever, 02 Jun 2010 From out of nowhere, Mickey Rourke has made a slow comeback over the last few years, but he's at his bestin a long time with The Wrestler.
As we join Randy 'The Ram' Robinson (Rourke), it's 20 years on from his glory days & we see the man, himself, making a comeback for the fans. He knows his best days are behind him, but he can still bringin the crowds, & that's all that's important to him. However, his personal life's turned to crap & he's living out of a trailer. All he's got to look forward to is just thinking about old times & a potential rematch with one of his biggest opponents ever
Inbetween we see him eeking out a meagre living doing basic manual labour, moving boxes about, putting rubbish food into plastic containers at a deli counter. We also see him getting hooked on prescription medicines that cost a fortune under the counter, as well as steroids. Vanity insists that he gets his hair bleached & goes on a sunbed. Reality kicksin when he has to sport a hearing aid.
Thirty mins in, he's coveredin blood throughout the course of a fight, & it all looks incredibly gross! Okay, so I know this film will do things for effect, & that it's showing what goes on at hardcore wrestling matches, but because there's bits of glass & barbed wire ripping the Ram's flesh apart, it has a fantastic level of realism. He clearly doesn't feel good about having to put himself through this hellin order to make a buck.
As such, he ends upin hospital to have a heart bypass & is told his heart is notin great shape & if he continues to wrestle, then it'll kill him. Hence, it's time to reattach family ties with his daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), which have long-since been broken.
Mickey Rourke is a strange-looking creature these days after butchering his face with plastic surgery, but at least here it can be used to good effect as a man beaten up by both life & his job. Marisa Tomei, as Randy's friend, looks fantasticin the buff as she gives lapdances. She 44 & that rhymes with "Phwoar" (bit cheesy, I know but it's true!). However, her character, Cassidy, is also feeling her age as it's the younger girls who get the most clients while she's feeling similarly over the hillin a competitive world that thrives on youth. Evan Rachel Wood is also worth a watch here, but without giving away the plot, she wasn'tin it as much as I expected.
All those involved with this film were clearly dedicated as it had a tight shoot of 35 days & a very low budget of around $5-7m. As such, Rourke & Bruce Springsteen, who provided the title track for the movie, reportedly worked for free, & W.Axl Rose also donated the use of Guns N Roses' Sweet Child of Mine for no charge.
Overall, The Wrestler has a great low-key style which does away with incidental music & is all the better for it as we follow Randy's story. It's also the kind of film that could've been turned into an unnecessary, self-indulgent 3hr director's cut but Darren Aronofsky has fashioned a great drama that's neatly told within 105 mins before the end credits kick in. That said, I don't think it's a BAFTA-winning performance from Rourke, but then I think that was just a token gesture for the fact he missed out with Angel Heart. That said, Rourke certainly turnsin a fantastic performance & there's a moment involving a razor blade which I won't spoil here, but was done for real.
Mostly shot on hand-held camera, that does give a certain feel to the film that works well, but the print doesn't feel Blu-ray-sharp as a result of both that & the grainy effect applied, although it's still good. The film is presentedin a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen frame. For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
The sound isin DTS 5.1 & is fantastic for the wrestling scenes & everything you'd be looking for aurally, as are the nightclub scenes for Cassidy's job, while the rest are mostly dialogue-driven with speech coming through without a hitch.
The extras are as follows:
* In The Ring (42:42): A long feature that covers how the 35-day filming process went, where they filmed & also contains chat from key cast & crew members, including the fact the film wasn't storyboarded so they just set up scenes & let them roll however they turned out, which allowed for some additional creative freedom & helps tell a sort-of documentary style about it.
A major problem with this feature is that it isn't chaptered - especially since it's divided up into topics, so if you stop watching part-way through & want to go back to a certain point, it requires fast-forwarding :(
* Interview with Mickey Rourke (15:45): Donein a Q&A style with questions posedin text onscreen before Mickey appears to give the answer.
* Trailer (2:27): Presentedin anamorphic 2.35:1.
However, at the start of the disc comes one thing I abhor - trailers. These should should be part of the extras & NOT shoved before the main menu. We are notin the age of rental video. Hence, the titles featured won't get mentioned here, even though one was a film that looks interesting. Another was an advert for a TV channel(!)
The menu mixes sound & images from the filmin a neat way, there are English subtitles but the Chaptering is appalling with just 12 over the near-two hours.
Film: 8/10
Picture: 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Extras: 4/10
The Wrestler Blu Ray UK - By: David Craig, 29 May 2010 Here We Go
Movie - 4/5
Blu Ray Picture Quality - 3.5/5
Blu Ray Audio Quality - 3.5/5
Extras on Disc - 2/5
Call me Randy! - By: Derek Dominoe, 25 Jan 2010 
The Wrestler is a tremendous film. Mickey Rourke's performance is outstanding & he is superbly supported by Marisa Tomei & Evan Rachel Ward. Darren Aronofsky's near-documentary style suits this tale perfectly. There's nothing glamorous about the lives of these people - they're regular folk with regular problems & it's this stark depiction of life that wins this film all the high praise it has received.
Simple story-telling with magnificent performances. There's not really much else to say other than don't miss this!
The DVD has some nice extra material on the making of the film but it's the feature that wins this round.
