Kansas, the mid-1930s: Millie (Emily Bett Rickards), a single mother, is working as a waitress at some café, just to make ends meet, and she has no clear idea what to do with her life - until she sees her first professional wrestlng match - and she knows that's exactly what she wants to do. So she walks up to the promoter Billy Wolfe (Josh Lucas) and persuades him to at least try her out. Billy agrees to this considering it as a joke. However, when she manages to defeat one of his (male) wrestlers, he's suitably impressed and decides to take her on - there's just one problem, women's wrestling is still illegal in the USA, so he takes her on the carney tour and has her wrestle (and mostly defeat) whoever's challenging her for money. She soon becomes a success, and other lady wrrestlers join the tour. Also Millie and Billy become a couple before long. Thing is, Billy's a bit of a womanizer, plus he shows a tendency to beating her, so their romance is over soon - and yet she soon marries him, just so he can't shut her out of the organisation they are building up, and soon they arre the first female wrestling organisation of the country, with Millie being its main star. The years go on, and eventually wrestling moves onto television, with Millie and Billy's organisation on the forefront. However, with TV the sport changes, not only are the fights scripted by then, but actual storylines are introduced into the sport - and one such storyline has Millie lose her title to another, younger wrestler (Toni Russell) - but she refuses to follow that script and keeps her title in a fair fight. By then, Millie and Billy's relationship has somewhat soured, and of all people, she has fallen in love with Billy*s son (Tyler Posey) - to whom she's much closer in age than to Billy anyways -, a feeling that is mutual. This leads to a messy divorse, and Millie eventually losing the promotion to Billy. She however builds up her own organisation. but just lacks the budget to compete with Billy's. All she has now is the only meaningful championship belt in ladies wrestling, and her only way to profit on this is to fight and defeat Billy's new favourite among his lady wrestlers )Kailey Latimer) ...

To properly appreciate this film, it sure helps to have at least a rudimentary understanding of wrestling as both a sport and a show business, as Queen of the Rng pretty much breezes through curca 20 years or wrestling in a mere two hours - and it's much to the credit of this movie that despite spanning two decades, its story still feelsvery stringent and coherent, doesn't try to go epic at the cost of good storytelling. And while I have no idea how close the movie sticks to Mildred Burke's actual life story, what we see on screen is as compelling as it's action-filled (and there's plenty of dynamic wrestling action in this one), with characters that just feel real, embodied by an able ensemble. So in essente, this is just a rally good watch.

Queen of the Ring will play select UK Cinemas from September 19thl, 2025, with an on demand release following October 13th.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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