‘Queen of the Ring’ Review: Emily Bett Rickards Brings Soul and Strength to Female Wrestling Biopic

Wrestling pics are having a moment. Last year saw the excellent, if unjustly ignored, The Iron Claw, about the ill-fated Von Erich brothers. Now comes Ash Avildsen’s hugely entertaining, old-fashioned biopic about Mildred Burke. If you don’t know who Burke is (and the vast majority probably don’t), this film aims to correct that. A pioneer of the sport who became the first million-dollar female athlete in history, Burke was a three-time women’s world champion from the 1930s through the 1950s, a time when women’s wrestling wasn’t even legal in most of the country. Her story fairly demands to be told, and Queen of the Ring, which served as the opening night film of the 39th annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, largely does it justice.

Based on Jeff Leen’s extravagantly titled 2009 book The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend (try fitting that on a marquee), the film stars Emily Bett Rickards (Arrow) in a breakout performance as Burke. We first see her as an unwed teenage mother working as a waitress in a Kansas diner under the watchful eye of her mother (Cara Buono). But Millie, who possesses a formidable muscularity, has dreams of becoming an entertainer. And since she can’t sing or dance, she figures that wrestling is her way out of the boonies.

When promoter Billy Wolfe (a charismatic Josh Lucas) swings by with his traveling wrestling show, she takes the opportunity to impress him by requesting a bout with one of his male wrestlers. The skeptical Billy lets her compete for his own amusement, but becomes a believer when she conquers her much larger opponent. He promptly takes her under his wing and she begins winning match after match against men at carnivals throughout the Midwest.

Along the way, she and Billy fall in love and get married. The relationship soon falls apart, however, when he begins cheating on her with several of the other female wrestlers he’s added to his roster. She agrees to stay married to him, but only as a business arrangement, and enters into a romance with his son G. Bill (Tyler Posey, Teen Wolf), who’s long worshipped her.

At a press conference during the festival, writer-director Avildsen ruefully commented that the story should have been told as a miniseries and that an hour had been cut from the film’s running time. The results are apparent onscreen, as Queen of the Ring suffers from an episodic quality that ironically makes it feel longer than it is.

As more and more characters are added — including such female wrestlers as Mae Young (a striking Francesca Eastwood), Elvira Snodgrass (Marie Avgeropoulos), June Byers (real-wrestler Kailey Farmer, making an impressive screen debut), Nell Stewart (Kelli Berglund), Gladys Gillem (Deborah Ann Woll) and Babs Wingo (Damaris Lewis), one of a trio of Black female wrestlers — the narrative choppiness becomes apparent. You’ll find yourself straining to keep up with the romantic and business plot developments that sometimes seem to come out of nowhere.

But it ultimately doesn’t prove too harmful, thanks to the inherently fascinating nature of the story and the cinematic quality with which it’s been rendered (which is not to say that considerable liberties haven’t been taken). The wrestling sequences are particularly visceral, with the actors, particularly Rickards, exhibiting such a fierce physical commitment that it’s easy to imagine that there must have been plenty of offscreen nursing care. (The filmmaker might have inherited his talent for fight scenes, since his father John Avildsen’s directing credits include Rocky and three Karate Kid films. One of the stars of the latter series, Martin Kove, plays a colorful supporting role here.)

Despite its low budget, the film looks terrific, effectively conveying its vintage settings thanks to Andrew Strahorn’s handsome, sepia-tinged cinematography and Sofija Mesicek’s period-perfect costumes. The acting proves consistently powerful, with vivid supporting turns from Adam Demos as Mildred’s loyal friend who would find fame and fortune as Gorgeous George, Walton Goggins as wily rival promoter Jack Pfefer, and young heartthrob Gavin Casalengo (The Summer I Turned Pretty) as Mildred’s grown son. But it’s ultimately Rickards, who handles the intense physical and emotional demands of her role with consummate skill, that gives the film its heart and soul.