Mick Foley, who after years of journeyman work and trying out various personas achieved rasslin' stardom with the WWF as Mankind, has gazed upon Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler and, in Slate, given it his professional seal of approval. Foley, who has written a trio of best-selling memoirs as well as some children's books, reports that he had been approached in the past about writing the definitive wrestling movie and that he turned down an offer to serve as a consultant on the Aronofsky film, figuring that if "I felt like having my name attached to a failure... I'd write another novel." But after attending a screening of the movie, Foley was moved by Mickey Rourke's performance as the faded '80s wrestling icon Randy "the Ram" Robinson, honoring the actor's ability to make "the pathetic seem heroic", and impressed by the film's documentary-style atmosphere. (Aronofsky shot with "working independent wrestlers" and shot "at real independent wrestling shows"; as the director mentions in this interview, this level of verisimitude extended even to the scenes at a New Jersey grocery-store deli counter, where the Ram supplements his meager income by donning a hairnet and spooning out potato salad, and where moviegoers can see Rourke, in character, affably messing around with real customers.) "Rourke", notes Foley, "deserves great credit not only for whipping himself into incredible shape—packing 30 pounds of muscle on for the role—but for doing his wrestling homework. Learning the trade at age 52 could not have been easy, but Rourke's in-ring work is good enough to pass this wrestler's sniff test. No one will ever confuse Randy's clothesline with Stan Hansen's, and the scenes surely benefited from careful editing, but much of what Randy did—his flying 'Ram Jam'; a Japanese enzugiri kick—actually looks pretty good. Importantly, it doesn't look any better than it should. His first in-ring scene, with a starry-eyed rookie thrilled just to be in the same arena with a former mat legend, looks realistically rudimentary."
"And everyone involved—Rourke, Aronofsky, independent wrestler Necro Butcher, stunt coordinator Douglas Crosby—deserves credit for creating a memorable midmovie bloodbath, a fight involving broken glass, barbed wire, a staple gun, and other implements."
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