Directed By Ash Avildsen

Starring – Emily Bett Rickards, Josh Lucas, Tyler Posey

The Plot – In a time when pro wrestling for women was illegal all over the United States, a small town single mother (Rickards) embraces the danger as she dominates America’s most masculine sport and becomes the first million dollar female athlete in history.

Rated PG-13 for violence including domestic violence, strong adult language, suggestive material and smoking.

QUEEN OF THE RING – Official Teaser Trailer – In Theaters March 7th (Based on a True Story)

POSITIVES

While evidentially obvious as quick as the opening frame that this movie was made with a minimalized budget, the production values and set designs for the movie are quite impactful towards luminating the vintage transcendence of the 40’s and 50’s, particularly the color grading of the cinematography from Andrew Strahorn, who makes this film dazzle on the big screen. Not only are the sets seamlessly decorated to emulate the authenticity of the deep south, without anything in the way of noteworthy distraction to compromise to appeal, but the sequences inside of the arena’s, with little influential lighting and colorful graphics, correspond to the so-called dark ages of the sport, which went from the circus tents of state fairs to sold out sports arenas practically overnight, and while I have many problems within the many interpretations towards this film, the visuals reenacting such an important time to the industry are achieved masterfully, serving as one of the only elements that kept me faithfully glued to this established world and characters, especially as the film took on more pressing matters for itself. In addition to breathtaking production values and meaningful visuals, the performance from Emily Bett Rickards is immaculate towards initiating the fiery intensity and resiliency of Burke, especially with the committed attention to detail in her body transformation and in-ring stature that proved she did her homework towards her undertaking. Rickards is rarely paid off by a script that doesn’t value her intimately personal moments away from the ring, but she makes the most of those highly over-the-top charismatic moments of Mildred portraying her character, and the results lead to a performance that all of Rickards’ familiarity simply disappears into, with everything from Mildred’s well-known southern drawl to her immense ring presence bringing to life the spirit of the women’s rights pioneer. Aside from Rickards, Josh Lucas digs deep into the dark and often murky questionable depths of promoter Billy Wolfe’s practices, with a far greater dependency on dramatic underlining’s that Lucas to inspire one of the more detestable turns of his prestigious career. While Lucas typically enacts these during some of the more surrealistically silly sequences in the movie’s duration, his energy and leading man radiance comes across naturally in a film where emotionally he is giving it everything that he’s got, and while I knew a lot about Billy Wolfe’s shady intentions, I was enamored by Lucas’ duality towards inspiring the every-man charm that made Mildred fall for him. Beyond a duo of effective performances, there’s also plenty of eye-opening cameos to the movie’s ensemble that provided industry influence, particularly one pro-wrestling historian and long-time on-screen heel manager who gets his lifetime dream of portraying the National Wrestling Alliance’s commissioner, which feels like a role that he was born to play.

NEGATIVES

Being a longtime pro-wrestling enthusiast, boredom was the last thing that I expected out of “Queen of the Ring”, especially for the lack of accessible knowledge towards Mildred Burke, but the bland direction from Avildsen, as well as a bloated screenplay that tries to include too much to the story, made this feel a progression that was constantly happening in slow motion, making it difficult to attach myself to any character or arc in the story, based entirely on how little time it used to focus on any of it. The biggest example of these is easily in the overnight love story between Mildred and Billy, which simply just clicks on from one scene to the next, with nothing in the way of credibly long-term development between them that taps into this notion that these people are legitimately attracted to one another, instead of Mildred simply sleeping with him to get ahead. Like most biopics, the film has a very telegraphed structure that makes it effortlessly predictable in this regard, but even worse than conventionalism is Avildsen’s desire to dramatize every personal conflict that Mildred comes into contact with, regardless if it calls for meandering musical scores and theatrics that make every bullet point to the storytelling feel like the movie’s climax. As you can imagine, this wears the audience down quite immediately in the proceedings, leaving very little emotional impact or even momentary suspense towards the movie’s climax, which on it own attempts the time honored tradition of making pro-wrestling a legitimate means of competition, which makes the movie feel like a mark towards its own exploration. As for the cluttered and chaotic script, the film’s necessity of introducing a new character every ten minutes starts to become tedious when it takes away time and development from the dreaded disposition of Burke, who because of such time constraints achieves her wildest dreams and overcomes burdens with little to no struggle along the way. This wouldn’t be a problem in a TV series, as each character could be given ample time to properly flesh out, however here the intrusions feel self-sabotaging to the entire reason the film exists in the first place, wiping away subtlety and nuance in the process, which drains equally impactful towards some of the most obvious and on-the-nose dialogue that I have heard in quite sometime. Sometimes this pertains to the characters accentuating the names of characters in order for the audience to understand who is who, but the worst of these matters pertains to smart Mark terminology within the sport, like explaining what terms like “Faces” or “Heels” means, that constantly feels like it’s trying to talk down to outsider audiences not familiar with the sport, and it grinds these conversations and interactions to a screeching halt that keeps these scenes from ever feeling genuine. This is where a gripping screenwriter could smooth them into the sentiments of the characters naturally, but the outlines always feel intentional, so the purpose feels evident, rendering it somewhere between artificially wooden and impersonal in ways that make these vital pioneers of women’s wrestling feel like types, instead of living, breathing entities. That seems like a good time to talk about the characters, particularly Mildred, who despite being such a documented warrior to women’s fights for equality in sports, comes across here as naive and even sacrificial to the ruthlessness of men’s condemning them in the sport, making it difficult to fully buy seeing her as the trailblazer that the movie wants so desperately to depict her as. As previously elaborated with my overwhelming praise towards Rickards’ performance, none of this is her fault, but rather the imbalance depicted between lifestyles that has her feeling like more of a character, instead of a person, and though the meat and potatoes of any audience interest in a biopic usually pertains to depiction of the sport or industry that they succeed in, I truly feel that the lack of humanity and exploration in the person behind the character feels most tragic to the movie’s integrity, especially considering that after 130 minutes of this film, everything that I learned about her can still be summarized in a Wikipedia page entry that feel just as personal. Then there’s the technical merits for the movie, with a soundtrack committing the popular biopic cliche of utilizing song choices that didn’t exist in the depicted time frame, as well as editing so compromisingly intrusive that the abrasive cuts between scenes of in-ring physicality obscure any meaningful evidence towards this ensemble doing their own stunts and learning choreography of ring psychology for the portrayal. The songs themselves are not only improper and distracting to the scenes they accompany, but performed with the kind of painfully dominant Southern drawl in country music instrumentals that makes this feel like someone’s uneducated view of what they think pro-wrestling is in their minds, and the editing, while enacting a penchant for the rhythms of a back and forth match, do little towards attaining believability in the chemistry of the combatants, failing to add anything in the way of meaningful momentum or body-tolling physicality that outlines the commitment it takes to partake in a sport defined by devastating impacts.

OVERALL
“Queen of the Ring” is an often rushed and sloppily convoluted sports biopic that enacts very little emotional resonance to a story cloaked in women’s rights importance. With the movie choosing to focus on so much, it has so very little time to spend with Mildred away from the ring, and the results sees this film having its shoulders pinned to the mat with ease, despite the masterfully transformative performance from Rickards, who fights so feverishly to make the movie her own, when nearly everything else is working against her.

My Grade: 4.3 or D-