reddiemurf81

Mildred Bliss was an ordinary single mother who worked as a waitress in her mother's diner. While she worked hard and cared for her son, she was bored & dreamed of doing something more with her life.

One day, Millie & her mother attended a wrestling match (that featured a match between Billy Wolfe & Gorgeous George), and Millie immediately became obsessed with learning how to wrestle. She proceeded to hound Billy Wolfe until he agreed to train her.

Fast forward some time, Mildred Burke (which sounded tougher than Bliss) is now headlining wrestling events under Billy Wolfe's management.

The rest, as they say, is history,,,

While I don't really follow wrestling like I used to, from the late 90s to the late 2000s I followed professional wrestling like crazy. Most every Monday & Thursday night I would be watching Raw & Smackdown. I even fantasized about taking it up myself (daydreaming mostly, cause I'm certainly not tough enough to handle the squared cirlce). The action, the drama, the hilarity,, it was awesome.

Cut to present day, I saw this movie trailer on YouTube, and saw that Emily Bett Rickards (loved her as Felicity in the Arrowverse) was playing lead. So I just had to see this film. I had no clue that she was playing a real life pioneer in women's sports entertainment. I remember seeing Mae Young & the Fabulous Moolah in the WWE back in the early 2000s. I didn't get it then, but now I obviously see that they were also pioneers.

Rickards deserves to be acknowledged for her performance in this movie. She's amazing! (Yes, I'm infatuated, but really)

The entire cast is great. Speaking of which, what a cast! Lucas, Eastwood, Posey, Goggins, Woll, Buono, as well as the others I'm not as familiar with. Spectacular performances.

Alice (Chastain) and Celine (Hathaway) are both models of the 1960s woman. They are next door neighbor housewives and mothers, catering to and supporting the ambitions of their workaholic husbands. Their young boys Theo and Max are as close as brothers, and spend most waking moments together.

One day, while working in her garden, Alice sees Max standing out on a 2nd story ledge, trying to hang a bird house that he'd built. Frantic, Alice shouts for Max to get off the ledge and get back inside the house. Being a little boy, Max ignores her plea and continues. Alice runs next door, shouting Celine's name (all while Celine is inside vacuuming), and only gets her attention when she runs through the door and up the stairs to Max's room. Only to discover that it's too late.

Both families are devastated at the loss of little Max. Alice and Simon (husband) try their best to be there for Celine and Damian (husband), but of course there's only so much that can be done in a situation like this.

About a month after the funeral, Celine comes around and begins trying to move on. She has Alice & Simon over for drinks, attends bday parties, school functions, even has Theo over to her house.

However, Alice begins to suspect Celine is doing more than just trying to move on.

So,, I'm not going spoil everything. Try and imagine a Hitchcock type of movie made by Lifetime (with a slightly bigger budget), and it has two of the top actresses today playing the lead parts. That's pretty much what we have with this film (imo). Chastain & Hathaway make the film (not that the rest of the cast is bad) worth seeing, bc those two are always worth watching.

I don't want to necessarily compare this to Hitchcock, but it definitely draws some inspiration from his kind of movies.

This is very much a suspenseful kind of thriller. Not in an extreme, high intensity kind of way, but somewhat more of a slow burn.

As I said, Chastain and Hathaway are incredible as always, and the reason to watch.