"Bad times don't last but bad guys do!"
Sumerian Pictures / Sherry Media Group
There's the usual unlikely rags-to-riches (to rags again) single mother origin story after Burke meets the lascivious carnival barker of a promoter, Billy Wolfe (a squirmy Josh Lucas), and the pair go on tour to take the professional wrestling world by storm. When they meet another grappling star, the future Hall of Famer heel Mae Young (an ultracool Francesca Eastwood, daughter of Clint), alongside boisterous wrestling pioneer (Walton Goggins), things take off beyond the novelty of watching athletic women wrestle each other. Despite the talented cast and enough period-era details, production design, and costuming, there's often a lack of bite to the momentum of the road film.
Rickards is more than up to the task of portraying Burke in an emotionally fierce performance, but Avildsen's serviceable direction is more concerned with an anachronistic fidelity to his numerous montages rather than stylishly translating the larger-than-life nature of the seedy early days of women's pro wrestling. Its bravado portrait of all the chicanery and misogyny that came with women's wrestling also often overexplains many of the now well-known inner workings (see kayfabe) of the twentieth-century business.
Queen of the Ring screens at the VIFF Centre starting April 4th.
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