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" This week, Stephen Garrett will be reviewing notable movies from the 2008 Toronto Film Festival. To read more of his exclusive reviews, please click here. ***** The combination couldn&amp;#039;t be more unlikely. Robert Siegel, a budding screenwriter best known for spending seven years editing the humor weekly The Onion dreams up a bittersweet script about a down-and-out pro wrestler haunted by his &amp;#039;80s fame. Washed-up actor Mickey Rourke, hungry for a comeback and more than willing to pump up his body into a steroidal stew, petitions for the lead role. And Darren Aronofsky, wunderkind intellectual auteur of bleak paranoid mathematical thriller Pi and even bleaker drug-addition cautionary tale Requiem for a Dream, produces and directs the story, using an unpolished, grain-heavy camera style more in keeping with esoteric European dramas than Hollywood star vehicles. The result? An unqualified triumph called The Wrestler, a simple, stirring tearjerker that uses tanning spray, stringy peroxide hair and spandex pants with a bizarre lack of irony and more than a hint of crushing sadness. Call it Requiem for Hulk Hogan. And look for Rourke to deliver body blows to his fellow Oscar nominees at next spring&amp;#039;s Academy Awards ceremony. Aronofsky, whose last feature was the muddled sci-fi romance The Fountain, is prone to letting a fetishistic use of filmmaking tools (arresting cinematography, heavily-effected camerawork, showboat editing and bombastic sound design) overwhelm his storytelling. This time around, he wisely steps out of the way and lets Siegel&amp;#039;s lovely, rueful tale reveal itself -- slowly, deliberately, and with a devastating sense of fatalism. The movie even adds a hoary conceit -- the stripper with a heart of gold -- and gets Marisa Tomei to breathe new life into the worn-out stereotype. Not only that, she also bares her stunning 43-year-old bod with brazen aplomb -- and it actually doesn&amp;#039;t feel gratuitous. The essence of these two characters is their dependence on their bodies for everything: their career, their identity, their own self-worth. It&amp;#039;s also their key to an alternate reality, a fantasy world where they are in control in their own unique way and they dictate the rules. The moment they step out from behind their tightly toned physicality is the moment they are truly naked -- emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. It&amp;#039;s a basic idea, but one that Siegel and Aronofsky make surprisingly profound. They mine its power by detailing the excruciating pain that Rourke&amp;#039;s character Randy &amp;quot;The Ram&amp;quot; Robinson must endure when he steps into a ring and suffers the staged battle royales that draw blood with everything from a strategically placed razor blade to a shower of broken glass on barbed wire. And through it all, Rourke builds on the gauntlet of suffering by making his character funny, charming and good-hearted. This is a portrait of a man desperate for redemption but trapped by his flaws in ways that are heartbreakingly irreversible. The Wrestler is shaping up to have a charmed life. One day after winning the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, landing a powerhouse kick right on the kisser of every major distributor in North America. Round-the-clock negotiations ensued, and when the dust settled, Fox Searchlight ended up holding the title. Prepare for a year-end Ram-Jam that will knock your socks off.  The Wrestler will be opening in limited release December 17. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/a5065/the-wrestler-movie-review-091108/>