| | | |Never Give Up Without a Fight.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 2.35:1, English, Spanish, Subtitled, Dubbed
"An emotional smackdown. Rourke's never been better, and the change of pace and texture suits Aronofsky perfectly." Dan Jolin, Empire
"Witness the ressurection of Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's deeply affecting film." David Ansen, Newsweek
"The movie has the simplicity and confidence of a Johnny Cash song." Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
"The Wrestler is like Rocky made by the Scorsese of Mean Streets. It's the rare movie fairy tale that's also a bravura work of art." Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances." Todd McCarthy, Variety
Editor's Note
At first glance, Darren Aronofsky's THE WRESTLER may seem like a departure for the oftentimes frenetic filmmaker, and in some ways it is. When this story of a past-his-prime performer is compared to PI, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, and THE FOUNTAIN, there is relatively little trace of psychoscientific addiction imagery, hip-hop editing, or grimly elegant peeks into dreams, nightmares, and otherworlds. Comic moments are plentiful. Aronofsky's signature close-ups of faces have been replaced with ones that force themselves into wounds inflicted for visceral spectacle. Much of the time the camera floats and bobs with an observant, almost documentary-like quietness, ethereally following the wrestler as if it were his past, and the viewer may perceive vague connections to a later, lonelier, less legitimate Rocky Balboa.But Mickey Rourke isn't the Italian Stallion--he's Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a man who has spent decades slicing himself open in choreographed fights while adoring crowds roar. Pro wrestling isn't as lucrative as it was for Randy in the 1980s, but he stays at it while working menial jobs because performing isn't just the only thing he craves--it's the only thing that, at 50, he knows how to crave. While courting his one true friend, a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), Randy does his best to restart a relationship with the angry daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) he abandoned. But Rourke imbues the image of Randy, ready to pounce from the ropes, looking almost as unreal as the box art on action figure packaging, with an expression of pain, desperation, and joy. It's a close-up that makes two things clear. For one, Randy's charisma is inseparable from the crippling fixation that's kept him alive. For another, THE WRESTLER might be at once a simpler and more complex meditation on addiction and eternal struggle than any of Aronofsky's earlier work.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Audio: Spanish Dolby Digital Stereo | | Dubbed: Spanish | | Featurette: Within The Ring - A No Holds Barred One On One With Real Wrestlers & Filmmakers | | Interactive Menus | | Music Video: "The Wrestler" - Performed By Bruce Springsteen | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, Spanish | | Trailers |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | The Wrestler - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 4/10/2009 5:36 PM | |
For those who have been following Darren Aronofsky's career since he broke out in 2000 with Requiem for a Dream, his latest work, The Wrestler, might very well come as a bit of a shock. Unlike Requiem and 2006's The Fountain, the film does not garner its power from hyperactive editing (the former) nor grandiose flourishes of the patently ludicrous (the latter). Shot in grainy 16mm by the estimable Maryse Alberti, a cinematographer who has spent the last few years shooting documentaries, The Wrestler realigns Aronofsky as a director concerned with the slow burn of American neo-realism more than hyperactive pseudo-transcendentalism....read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Foxvideo |
| Release Date: 4/21/2009 |
| Running Time: 109 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2008 | | Catalog ID: 2257499 | | UPC: 00024543574996 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Golden Globe (2009) |  | Bruce Springsteen ("The Wrestler"), Winner, Best Original Song - Motion Picture | |
Independent Spirit (2009) | | Darren Aronofsky, Scott Franklin, Winner, Best Feature | |
Golden Globe (2009) | | | Marisa Tomei, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | |
British Academy Awards (2009) | | | Marisa Tomei, Nominee, Best Supporting Actress | |
Oscar (2009) | | | Marisa Tomei, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role | |
Independent Spirit (2009) | | Maryse Alberti, Winner, Best Cinematography | |
Oscar (2009) | | | Mickey Rourke, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role | |
Independent Spirit (2009) | | Mickey Rourke, Winner, Best Male Lead | |
Golden Globe (2009) | | Mickey Rourke, Winner, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama | |
Screen Actors Guild (2009) | | | Mickey Rourke, Nominee, Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role | |
British Academy Awards (2009) | | Mickey Rourke, Winner, Best Leading Actor | |
Venice Film Festival (2008) | | Darren Aronofsky, Winner, Golden Lion Award |
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| | Professional Reviews | Box Office
3.5 stars out of 5 -- "Director Darren Aronofsky's new film THE WRESTLER is a quiet, intimate portrait of a troubled soul -- someone at odds with himself and with life in general whose every ounce of pain and virtue is measured onscreen." 11/01/2008 p.82Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Rourke doesn't make a false move in this movie....You watch THE WRESTLER in a state of pure exhilaration. A great actor in a great movie will do that to you." 12/11/2008 p.103 Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "Emotionally raw and with a climax that should draw tears, Mickey Rourke gives the performance of his career." 01/01/2009 p.60 Entertainment Weekly
"THE WRESTLER is like ROCKY made by the Scorsese of MEAN STREETS. It's the rare movie fairy tale that's also a bravura work of art." -- Grade: A 12/19/2008 p.38-39 USA Today
3 stars out of 4 -- "In THE WRESTLER, Mickey Rourke wallops us with a damaged hero who is full of pathos and poignant contradictions....Rourke gives the performance of his life." 12/21/2008 Los Angeles Times
"Rourke brings just the right amount of faded charisma to Robinson....The actor is not playing himself but rather a part powerfully informed by his past life." 12/17/2008 New York Times
"[Mr. Aronofsky] makes a convincing show of brute realism. The supermarkets, trailer parks, V.F.W. halls and run-down amphitheaters of New Jersey are convincingly drab, and the grain of the celluloid carries a sour and salty aura of weariness and defeat." 12/17/2008 Chicago Sun-Times
4 stars out of 4 -- "Mickey Rourke plays the battered, broke, lonely hero, Randy ('The Ram') Robinson. This is the performance of his lifetime....This is Rourke doing astonishing physical acting." 12/23/2008 Entertainment Weekly
Included in Entertainment Weekly's 2008 Films Of The Year -- "In this great, tender, brutal, lyrical, and haunting tale of a washed-up professional wrestler still living off the fumes of his '80s glory days, Darren Aronofsky shows you Randy 'The Ram' Robinson from the inside out..." 12/26/2008 Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "[B]eautiful, bittersweet and, at times, surprisingly funny....For Rourke, at least, the wrestler is the role of a lifetime, and he's better than he's ever been." 02/01/2009 Washington Post
"Imagining someone other than the beatifically battered Mickey Rourke in the role of THE WRESTLER would be like picturing someone other than John Malkovich in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH." 12/25/2008 A.V. Club
"Elements that might have otherwise seemed cliché...are poignantly authentic in the hands of Rourke and director Darren Aronofsky..." 04/21/2009 ReelViews 9 of 10
The film with the loudest buzz at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival was Darren Aranofsky's The Wrestler - quite a change for the man who brought The Fountain to the same venues a couple of years ago to almost universal indifference. The Wrestler, on the other hand, excited interest from all corners and, just before its first screening, it was announced that Fox Searchlight had purchased the North American distribution rights. Almost immediately, the studio's publicity department went into overdrive, and for good reason. This is the kind of film that inevitably will excite awards talk - for Mickey Rourke (Best Actor), for Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress), for Aronofsky (Best Director), and for the film (Best Picture). It's redemption for the filmmaker, who has regained the "critics' darling" label applied to him following his debut feature, Pi and its forceful follow-up, Requiem for a Dream...Mickey Rourke, who has been flying under the radar for nearly two decades, makes this a comeback to remember. Admittedly, Rourke has never quit acting. In fact, his filmography shows more than 30 credits since his heyday in the late '80s and early '90s. With some notable exceptions (Sin City, for example), most of those have not been roles to brag about. Randy is Rourke's first fully three-dimensional individual in a long time, afflicted not only with the foibles common to human beings, but the better impulses as well...It's not hard to understand why The Wrestler is getting so many plaudits from across the critical landscape...For Aronofsky, it's easy to forgive The Fountain, if this is what comes from the hard lessons he learned following that minor misfire. Whether The Wrestler wins any awards is beside the point - the fact that it's worthy of them is all that should matter to movie-goers who care about connecting with a unique and complex screen protagonist. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
"The Wrestler" is about a man who can do one thing well, and keeps on doing it because of need, weary skill and pride. He wrestles for a living. Pro wrestling is a fake sport, right? Yes, but as an activity, it's pretty real. I watch it on TV with fascination. It's scripted that the villain sneaks up on the hero, who pretends not to see him, and pushes him over the ropes and out of the ring. Fake. But when the hero hits the floor, how fake is that? "Those guys learn how to fall," people tell me. Want to sign up for the lessons?...Mickey Rourke plays the battered, broke, lonely hero, Randy ("The Ram") Robinson. This is the performance of his lifetime, will win him a nomination, may win him the Oscar. Like many great performances, it has an element of truth. Rourke himself was once young and glorious and made the big bucks. He did professional boxing just for the hell of it. He alienated a lot of people. He fell from grace and stardom, but kept working, because he was an actor and that was what he did. Now here is his comeback role, playing Randy the Ram's comeback...This is Rourke doing astonishing physical acting. He has the physique of a body builder, perhaps thanks to some steroid use, which would also be true of Randy. He gets into the ring and does the work...Special effects have robbed movies of their believability. But I've seen a lot of F/X, and I have to say it looked to me like he was really doing these things...The most fascinating element in Darren Aronofsky's film is the backstage detail about wrestling. He does this so well, yet has never made a film even remotely like this before...I cared as deeply about Randy the Ram as any movie character I've seen this year. I cared about Mickey Rourke, too. The way this role and this film unfold, that almost amounts to the same thing. Rourke may not win the Oscar for best actor. But it would make me feel good to see him up there. It really would. - Roger Ebert
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