Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows

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Moviecut—Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows

Watching wrestling with shadows i noticed one thing that Vince Mcmahon forgot that when dealing with talent never burn your bridges. vince forgot this and now he's paying for it big time. this is one of the best documentaries on film.

Bret Hart just comes across as a whiner, to me. If you wanna be in a position where you get to have a say in the outcome of matches, then you become a booker. Wrestlers are there to wrestle. They get paid millions and their share of the limelight, so the least they can do is to do as their boss asks. Yes, it was unscrupulous of Vince to go back on their agreement - but Bret had already shown himself not to be a team player, thinking of his own reputation before making sacrifices to move the company forward. The key word is 'entertainment'; there's no such thing as integrity of character in a profession that is coordinated using pre- planned results. You look at the rare breed of performer who've had an unbroken run with one company - I bet during their tenure they've had angles they disliked or didn't totally jive with, but they've worked it out somehow and done as requested, because that's what they're paid for. Millions of ordinary civilian workers have aspects of their jobs that are tough to swallow, but they take it as part of the deal... Why should wrestlers expect to be treated differently?

I have been a Bret Hart fan for as long as I can remember and when I heard of his betrayal by the WWF I was mad. This film portrays events leading up to and a bit after the Montreal incident. I think it is a really good film. I especially liked the behind the scenes aspect of the WWF.

I remember as a kid, my dad and I would forge through all video rental stores including blockbuster to attempt to find WWF PPV's on home video/VHS. We ended up buying this by mistake not knowing it's a documentary (I was 5 and his primary language is Spanish), at the time it was a bummer, but it was definitely a blessing in disguise, because as I grew older I remained a wrestling fan and learned the behind the scenes jargon and distillation, and loved being part of that fandom. The original VHS has since been discarded, but I rewatched on YouTube and just had to order the VHS on Amazon, I will never open this copy, it will remain a sealed collectible. This documentary is a national treasure. A sobering look into the life of a man who has the wrestling business in his blood. I still don't know how they were able to pull this documentary off. It felt almost voyeuristic to creep into the conflict between Bret, Vince, and HBK, especially looking at it with the power of hindsight and retrospect. Cannot recommend this enough for wrestling fans. If you're a fan of Bret's or just a fan of wrestling and the business aspect of it, this is a must watch. 10/10

When you boil away the melodrama, there was one lessen that everyone and anyone looking to get into the world of professional wrestling needs to know. No one is bigger then the sport. Yes, Bret Hart was one of the best performers ever. It was sad to see what Bret became in his last year with the WWF He became self absorbed, something that was evident in many of the scenes, and sadly, he was losing himself within his gimmick. His idea of going over Shawn Michaels, and vacating the WWF belt the following night would have been a serious blow to the stature of the WWF, and Vince needed to protect his interest, hence the "Montreal Screw job" That would have made the WWF look like a lower league to WCW. Bret's own words in not wanting to put Shawn over in his home country showed me that Vince was right, Bret screwed Bret, or more accurately, The Hit-man screwed Bret Hart. Despite his upbringing, Bret Hartr shows that when it comes to wrestling, he only cared about what made him look good. Even when Bret comments how he hated getting hurt in a match against the late Dino Bravo, mainly because it was a guy he didn't want to lose to. The film is a great documentary about what happens when fame goes to an athlete's head, and the over look everything they have. And also, a sad commentary about a man presented as a hero, but was as selfish as the common man.

In the world of pro wrestling there are two spaces in which to spin dramatic concepts. The first space contains what's immediately recognizable about the sport -- the juvenile soap operatics -- and is easily filled by the Hulk Hogans and Dwayne Johnsons; comic-book profiles, muscular and flashy, the business as a springboard into bad B-movies. The second space is an older one that predates the Vince McMahon empire, and is centered on the notion of athleticism in the service of storytelling, in which each match is a story unto itself. The competitors' choreography communicates a complex of beats and turning points making up an abstract narrative. After all, what are these faux-gladiatorial displays but a kind of ballet? There is most definitely an art lurking underneath the cheap theatrics. Hart came from this latter background. He understood the concept and exploited it with more acumen than anyone else. Between the time of pro wrestling's explosive popularity in the '80s and the period covered in this film, he championed this method of wrestling amidst all those silly plot lines that now dominate McMahon's machine. Given the status of rasslin' in popular culture, it is little wonder that outsiders are more familiar with the dim celebrities of Hogan and The Rock than they are with the more technical Hart. Where they have headlined cinematic dreck, he could have given us a finely directed film or a great screenplay. You see, Hart's original goal was to be a filmmaker. Not an actor. A filmmaker. You wouldn't know that just from seeing this. Family tradition led him into wrestling. So what we have here is a story commissioned using one of his filmmaker buddies, about the downfall of a born storyteller who misappropriated his own life and tried to make up for it, by experimenting with those concepts within his chosen profession that could extend beyond, into the realm of his curtailed ambition. There's a reference to "Shawshank Redemption," another story about a man who utilizes skills from outside his imprisonment to see him through to the end. In this documented segment of the Hit-man's journey we see him getting crushed by the carnival house atmosphere (creatively) that was always germane to the wrestling business, as well as by the ruthless business model that McMahon introduced to that corner of the sports world. As as far as topicality, this item is little more than a relic. Because wrestling has shifted so much in the decade since its release and this director relies so heavily on contemporaneous elements for his context, the feeling of immediacy that made this effective at the time is now gone. Oh well, at least the music is apt, and the long final sequence in Montreal is noteworthy in the way it reflexively twines its three visions -- the grandiose wrestling performance itself, the devolving backstage drama, and the idea of the film itself as framework and as a show about the show. In the big scheme of things, the tragedy of this man's life -- apart from all his trials and tribulations after the events contained here -- is us knowing we may have lost a considerably talented filmmaker to that four-cornered circus. The upshot is that it appears to have not completely destroyed him. He's escaped that world , and now maybe one of these days he'll finally make the full transition into film and reinvent himself, to his benefit and ours. Go for it, Bret. Blake's rating: 2 (out of 4)

Whether you love or loath Vincent K McMahon, there is no denying that he is a world class promoter. Whether you love or loath Bret Hart, there is no denying that he is a world class wrestler. That is why this is such a brilliant documentary. Bret Hart was THE top guy in the WWF in the mid-'90s. Vince was the man behind the character. The on-screen commentator was the behind-the-scenes owner/promoter. He signed Bret Hart up to an unprecedented 20 year contract in 1996 to stop Hart from joining the WWF's rival WCW. This documentary follows Bret around for one year. This one year is one of the most interesting in WWF history. It just so happens that the conclusion to this year contained THE most controversial night in recent wrestling history. Bret Hart was on his way to WCW but had a few weeks remaining on his WWF contract. The problem was that he was still the WWF Champion and this resulted in disputes and arguments from both sides as to how this problem would be resolved. This documentary crew was given an all access pass to all WWF events for the year that is covered. They go into the locker room and reveal all of the behind-the-scenes discussions and debates and the final concluding part to the most controversial night in recent wrestling memory. Watch this tape if you have even the smallest amount of interest in wrestling. See how the "evil boss" character of Vince McMahon was created on this infamous night in November '97 in Montreal and how Bret Hart finished his 14 year WWF career.