What an amazing film, poignant story, actor-driven ... mesmerizing ... sort of like watch a train wreck in slow motion, and unexpectedly seeing survivors.
Mickey Rourke is at the top of his form, and so is Marisa Tomei.
Both are at the end of the road, so to speak, for their respective "careers" - he, a wrestler, and she, a stripper.
Both struggle alone - she has a young son for whom she's working hard and hopes to go to school soon, and he, a broken relationship with an adult daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) for whom he's missed too many birthdays. She doesn't want to see him any more.
His effort to reach out is poignant, to say the least. And for a few moments, it works. In one of the most touching scenes I've ever seen, the two of them are walking through an abandoned amusement park on the boardwalk. He's walking toward the camera, she following behind, and then, with quickened pace, she catches up and loops her arm through her father's arm and leans her head on his shoulder.
His daughter's heart is reachable, but she knows the terrain of her father's heart, too.
At the end of the career road, he doesn't want to be alone; she says, "You just want someone to take care of you." In the end, he blows it again - did we expect anything else? Perhaps in a fairy tale, but a tiger doesn't change it stripes, and neither does Randy "The Ram" Robinson.
A heart attack finishes him. No more wrestling, so he ups his hours at the local grocery store, taking a weekend job in the deli. If there's ever been a better portrait of the humiliation of the worker, I've yet to see it. He gives it his best shot, but in the end, he can't take the humiliation, so he quits, and quits with style - his pride intact. I'm not gonna take this any more.
Meanwhile, at a local strip club, he's formed a "relationship" with an aging stripper. For her, he's a customer, but he'd like it to be more, and, as we discover, so would she.
In one of the best plot devices I've seen, they're like two ships passing in the night - needing love and companionship, but unable to connect, unable to be anything else then what they're doing. Are they trapped? Sort of! But they are who and what they are - a combination of choice and circumstance.
Both end up rebuffing one another - she at her work when he asks her for something more, and he, when he decides against doctor's orders, to enter the ring once again - she left work early to stop him before he wrestles, prepared to tell him, "Yes," but he enters the ring instead.
This story is about redemption - not the kind we'd like to see, what with a "they lived happily ever after" - but something simpler, and more profound at the same time - grace within the boundaries of our life; mostly a life accidental, a life of mistakes and short-sighted decisions, but it's the only life we've got.
Theologically, I ask, Where's God?
The film suggests (in a purely secular fashion) that God is found where we are, not where we're supposed to be, and likely, there is no "supposed to be" - there is only, Where we are! And that's the hope we see at the end - God with Randy "The Ram" in the ring, and with Cassidy in the stip club.
This is terrific film in all regards ... sad, but not a tear-jerker. A bit violent, that's for sure, as we get a picture of the professional wrestler playing all the American legion halls - wherever they can, for the love of the game, and whatever money they can make. Some of the scenes are "rather graphic," but don't let that deter you. This is a story worth knowing and a film worth seeing.
