I’m a sucker for a rousing sports film. I shy away from them at first, fight the pull of the story. Then, suddenly, I find myself cheering and yelling back at the flickering images. (Fine! The digital images!)
Ash Avildsen’s Queen of the Ring is not just a terrifically entertaining film set in the world of wrestling, it’s a significant peek into a part of history so many of us are unfamiliar with.
Mildred Burke was a groundbreaking athlete. She rose from carnival wrestling, when women were legally forbidden to compete in the sport in most of the U.S., to becoming the first million-dollar female athlete in history. And from the 1930s through the 1950s she won the women’s world champion title three times.
Based on Jeff Leen’s 2009 book The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend (there’s a mouthful!), we first meet “Millie” Burke (Emily Bett Rikards), working as a waitress in a Kansas diner in the ’30s, struggling to support her young son. But she dreams of much more and when cocky promoter Billy Wolfe (an excellent Josh Lucas) comes to town with his wrestling show, she insists he mentor her. He also falls for her. So begins Millie’s wild, challenging saga as well as the start of what would become a huge money making industry, female wresting.
Rikards, in a true star-making turn, sets the screen ablaze as Millie. It’s a hell of a showcase for a thesp mostly known for Arrowverse shows on The CW. The entire cast is to be commended including fantastic work by Tyler Posey, Walton Goggins, Gavin Casalengo and Adam Demos, who nails his ostentatious character, Gorgeous George. And kudos to the actor/wrestlers, Marie Avgeropoulos, Kailey Farmer, Kelli Berglund, Deborah Ann Woll, Damaris Lewis and, especially, Francesca Eastwood.
The director knows how to stage compelling action scenes in the ring. These women are fierce, and you truly feel their commitment, determination and pain. Avildsen also wrote the script, which doesn’t shy away from the emotional and (literal) physical beatings Millie had to take, not just from her fellow sportswomen but from Wolfe, all the while keeping the film’s style in line with paying tribute to 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s “Hollywood ‘women’s pictures.’ His dialogue is sometimes a bit cliché, but that, too, is in line with the homage.
There have been many well-made wrestling films in the last two decades (Unstoppable, Cassandro, The Iron Claw, Win Win, Foxcatcher, The Wrestler) but none as captivating as this one.
Avildsen is the son of Rocky’s Oscar-winning director, John, and has already made a much better film than his father ever did–Google his credits, rewatch Rocky and then disagree with me! Okay, maybe Save the Tiger can be singled out as a classic.
My only complaint about Queen of the Ring is that it should have been longer, something Avildsen echoed at a press conference stating he had to excise an entire hour from the final film. Perhaps we’ll be gifted a Director’s Cut when it lands on streaming/home video. For now, this version is more than fabulous and packs quite the powerful cinematic punch.
Queen of the Ring opens in theaters March 7, 2025.
