Queen of the Ring: A Frustratingly Straightforward Sports Biopic

There’s a particular balance that biopics have to strike. On the one hand, major points in their subject’s life need to be covered in order to be complete, and, on the other hand, the story needs to be told from a unique perspective in order to be dynamic and engaging in a way that is more than just documentary.  This struggle is pervasive in the genre, and what made 2007s ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story’ such a successful skewering of music biopics in particular: it may have lifted story inspiration from on particular real life musician’s life, but it hit every beat that practically every music biopic –and biopics in general– seem to hit.

Queen of the Ring is a new biopic from writer-director Ash Avildsen that follows the life of an icon, female professional wrestler Mildred Burke, a woman seen by most as the pioneer in the female wrestling space. Burke was a bonafide phenom, a tough as nails woman who grew up dirt poor and rose to the top of an industry, inspiring others to follow, and developed enemies along the way that she’d eventually have to overcome. The film delivers an excellent story ripe for a creative telling but despite several bright spots in the production, it fails to be so, opting instead for the most straightforward recounting. That is to say: it walks pretty hard.

The film proceeds much in the way that one would expect. In the 1930s, Mildred (Rickards) is a single mother working as a waitress in the diner owed by her mother, Bertha (Cara Buono). She is enamoured of the spectacle that is wrestling, and one day when her favourite wrestler, Bully Wolfe (Lucas) comes to the diner, she implores him to train her. However, after initially dismissing her, she defeats one of his male protegees in the ring and he relents. From there, the film hits basically every sports trope there is, including, but not limited to. a tumultuous, ill-advised love affair and Millie earning an arch rival who can’t compete on raw skill, so they decide to fight dirty.

Ultimately, this is the problem with Queen of the Ring: audiences have seen this movie before. It is less a compelling story than it is a biopic greatest hits reel, to the point where by with this sparse description of the first act, most are likely to guess how it wraps up.  It becomes a frustrating watch because there is so much material here to draw from and Avildsen has chosen to present it in the most straightforward way possible, and rather than present the story developing in such a way as to invite audiences to become invested in on an emotional level and having them feel “I can’t believe that happened”, most new scenes feel more like “and then this happened.” The film proceeds at such a breakneck pace that there’s little time to stop and absorb what has happened before it moves onto the next thing.

That being said, there are bright spots here. Rickards is great in the role of Millie ‘Muscles’ Burke. She has a real energy about her performance in a way that will have audiences rooting for the young, wide eyed Millie at the start of the film and the older, more jaded Millie at the end in equal measure thanks to a great mix of charisma and pathos deployed expertly throughout. Meanwhile, the wrestling matches themselves are also good. With few exceptions, they feel real and physical, and Rickards has clearly put a lot of work into perfecting both her ring presence and her body for the role -she boasts a physique that most will envy.

The film also features are some fun supporting performances, most notably Walton Goggins who, despite being perhaps the most subdued he’s been on screen in years, creates a memorable character with Jack Pfefer, one of the earliest men to introduce showmanship to the ring. Deborah Ann Woll and Francesca Eastwood each have complementary parts to play in Millie’s cohort of wrestlers as well, the three of them forming a group audiences will really want to root for.

These make the film all the more frustrating because not only does one want to see more of them, Queen of the Ring is the kind of film that is going to inspire. Somewhere, there will be women and girls who see this and thanks to Millie and become inspired to take up the sport, or to conquer the many obstacles that life throws in their way.  When this film finds its audience, it will likely become an important one.

It’s just a shame that it walks pretty hard.

still courtesy of Sumerian

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Matthew Simpson

Matthew Simpson is a freelance pop culture writer and podcaster based in Vancouver, Canada.  He is a life long Star Trek fan, thinks there are few cinematic streaks on par with John McTiernans’s 1987 to 1990 run of Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October.  He is also rather tall, which is unrelated to the movie thing.

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