Dear God, so many references to bad 90's wrestlers could be made here...

So one film I've kind of wanted to see for the last little while is the Mickey Rourke-starring The Wrestler. I always get Rourke and Ron Perlman confused, for some reason, but not this time; from what I've been hearing, this film, despite its hokey subject, is actually good. That's something I'll have to see for myself, but you know, everything's subjective.

A general synopsis of the movie is that Rourke's character is a down-and-out wrestler who has one shot at glory again; however, due to a medical illness, he might die if he does. It's basically an internal struggle as the character realizes he isn't anyone outside of the ring, and that if he dies, he might as well do it where he's loved. There's also some subplots including Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Rourke's character) trying to reforge his relationship with his daughter and date a stripper; you can only see how this is going to turn out.

It's kind of impressive that Rourke got trained professionally for his role, and does all his own stunts; I really enjoy when actors go that extra mile for authenticity. I suppose with the close-up shots in the ring, it would be a little unwieldy to keep switching stunt doubles in and out.

Apparently Nicholas Cage was going to star in this movie, but he was replaced with Rourke at the director's request. Thank god. I can only imagine what Cage would be like if he had to play someone who in turn was an actor; maybe that would cancel out something and actually result in a good performance.

Oh, I kid Nicholas Cage.