Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Mickey Rourke gives the performance of a lifetime as pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a former superstar now paying the price for twenty years of grueling punishment in and out of the ring. But he's about to risk everything to prove he has one more match left in him: a re-staging of his famous Madison Square Garden bout against "The Ayatollah."

Aronofsky delivers a spectacular character drama with The Wrestler. The film has the feel of a documentary more than a feature film but the style just lends more realism and emotion to the subject matter. Both Rourke and Tomei deliver incredibly nuanced performances that are almost career defining in their range.

I had the opportunity to catch this one during its theatrical release window and the filming style did not lend to a very compelling film presentation. I noticed a lot of what appeared to be video noise and the image was pretty soft. The Blu-ray presentation is a nice step up from what I saw theatrically with a considerable increase in sharpness and fine detail. There is still plenty of film grain but I didn’t notice the same video noise issues that I saw with the film print. The documentary style of the film doesn’t lend itself to a lot of eye candy but the presentation is a decent step up from the typical guerilla film style we typically see with underfunded documentaries.

The soundtrack is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio and overall it does a good job with the limited material. Since this film was shot like a documentary there isn’t much here but dialogue. The wrestling sequences have a nice catalog of classic 80’s rock favorites but even those don’t lift the soundtrack up much. Dialogue is intelligible but the levels vary a bit more than I typically care for.

Fox delivers some interesting supplements for this one. I loved the retrospective look at the wrestling world with interviews with past superstars and their thoughts on the film. You also get the music video for the theme song by Bruce Springsteen. A second disc houses a digital copy of the film for your portable players.

This is a very powerful film that is saddening yet uplifting in its own way. I imagine there are leagues of celebrities out there that can relate. Fox does a great job with the presentation, which is a clear improvement over the theatrical print I saw, making this an easy recommendation for fans of great character drama.