6.5/10

Director Igal Hecht presents to us a documentary on one of professional wrestling’s most polarizing figures, The Iron Sheik. For those who don’t know, Sheik was a hated wrestler during the 80’s for his anti-American character. In these educational 90 minutes, we learn everything from the death threats that the character received to the reasons for his madness in 2014. Sheik is still everywhere in today’s news with possibly the most outrageous Twitter page… where he is always saying something with an R rating. I enjoyed this documentary because it is the culmination of 8 years of camera work. The Sheik is followed everywhere from his sad independent wrestling appearances with 100 or so fans to the troubles he had in his own home with family. The arguments with his wife is very tense and at times hard to watch. He suffers through the death of a child and begins down a dark path of drugs that may never find a positive way out. I loved that this wasn’t just a wrestling documentary, and it instead chose to focus a majority of it’s time on the pain mentally and physically that The Sheik suffers through. The documentary showed me that The Sheik might not be as crazy as we thought, and maybe there is some intelligence to the things he does and say. If I had one criticism to this release, it’s the terrible camera work at times. It is a documentary, but a lot of the scenes are very hard to see when following along on the subtitles below. This goes a lot further than out of the room shots because there are scenes where The Sheik is sitting right in front of us and still it’s hard to make his face out. There is also a noticeable gap between the years of 1993 and 2006 in the story. I wish we would’ve learned more about his happenings during this time. Overall, The Sheik is a documentary that is worth a watch for any wrestling fan. I don’t think you have to be a Sheik fan to enjoy this documentary. All wrestling fans alike will laugh and worry for the lead of the picture. If you aren’t a wrestling fan, sadly I don’t see you getting much enjoyment out of this. You have to know the man behind the madness before going in. Otherwise, The Sheik feels like another rambling idiot to you. The Sheik gets a thumbs up from me