It looks like director Darren Aronofsky has managed to offset most of the damage he did to his reputation by giving us The Fountain with The Wrestler.

It’s a fairly standard plot, nothing you haven’t seen before – if I had one criticism about this film, it’s the predictability of it from the word go. That said, while you’ve seen, heard or read this story a hundred times, you probably haven’t seen it done this well.

I went to see The Wrestler in The Kino the other night and loved it about as much as you can love such a bleak look at a man earning a hand to mouth living at the tail end of, what to most of us seems like, a ridiculous career.

Widely being hailed as Mickey Rourke’s comeback, The Wrestler certainly gives us a sympathetic portrait of a man you might otherwise generalise as a complete asshole, but also examines the idea of ‘you are what you do’ and the concepts of career & success and their relative value to nurturing relationships and having family and friends around you in times of need.

This film deserves a big screen outing, if it sounds like your kind of thing at all, don’t wait for DVD. Don’t watch the trailer, it has too many snippets of key moments, but you could watch the trailer with Bruce Springsteen’s song over it so you don’t hear the dialogue at least. And it’s a great song, written especially for the film.

Of course, not everyone is a fan, my sister hated this film. What about you? Hated it / Loved it / Meh – leave a comment!