Blu-Ray Review: ‘The Wrestler’

The Wrestler was one of my favorite movies of last year. In fact, when sending in my Top 10 list a while back, I kept debating whether to put this or The Dark Knight first. I am still amazed by Mickey Rourke’s performance and pretty much everything else about this movie. I do not understand how this film was not nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. If you have not seen this film, go out and rent or buy it immediately.

I recently received the Blu-Ray of The Wrestler and while it should have many more special features, the 2 featurettes it comes with are pretty cool. The behind the scenes documentary called Within The Ring was fairly informative and pretty entertaining. It offered some candid moments from set and interviews with Darren Aronofsky, as well as other crew and some wrestlers. As a filmmaker, I love this stuff, especially when done well. There is a lot of behind the scenes footage shown and it is not just mostly talking heads. The second extra, Wrestler Round Table, will appeal much more to fans of wrestling but it was interesting to hear opinions of the film from some legendary professional wrestlers. The final extra is a so-so music video for Bruce Springsteen’s great song The Wrestler, which plays during the end credits of the film.

I have to say that I love the picture quality of the film on the disc. No they did not clean it up. It is grainy and not the usual ultra smooth looking Blu-Ray. This helps the film retain the gritty feeling it had in theaters. And for anyone who wants to claim it’s just a bad picture transfer, it is not. You can tell this by the very deep blacks, which have no more noise then the rest of the image. Some people may not like this but I really enjoyed it. My setup is in no way suitable to judge the audio but it sounded crisp to me. The final addition is that you get a Digital Copy of the film (which works on both Macs and PCs) for anyone who likes that.

Overall, this is a fantastic film and you should definitely find some way to watch it as soon as possible.  There will probably be a Special edition released sometime down the line for both the DVD and Blu-Ray, hopefully with many more bonus features and commentary.  Despite the lack of extras, I highly recommend this Blu-Ray.  

The Wrestler is Now Available on DVD & Blu-Ray

Jerry Cavallaro – www.AreYouStuckLikeChuck.com