Mark Reviews Movies: YOU CANNOT KILL DAVID ARQUETTE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 27, 2020

In 2000, David Arquette, the promising actor who started being typecast in goofy roles after his success as a bumbling cop in a horror series, won a professional wrestling championship. It was supposed to be a gag and, primarily, publicity for a movie—Ready to Rumble, a comedy starring Arquette and revolving around World Championship Wrestling, the now-defunct league that arranged the actor's involvement in wrestling and wrote the story in which he would become champion. Fans didn't take it that way.

Indeed, they were livid. In fact, as we learn near the start of You Cannot Kill David Arquette, a good number of them had remained angry for almost 20 years. On the other end of Arquette's career prospects, Hollywood appeared to lose in interest in him. The wrestling fiasco made it look as if the actor was incapable of taking anything seriously. Driving alone with a camera pointed in his face, Arquette explains that he hadn't had mainstream acting work in 10 years (The independent scene was calling, at least). He wonders how someone can face that level of consistent rejection, but here he is, going to audition after audition and being turned down for everything coming his way.

That's when Arquette decides to confront that rejection directly. He doesn't mount some movie project, intended to display his seriousness for the craft of acting, though. Instead, it's wrestling that's lingering in his mind. He has loved the sport/theater of it since he was a child, and for all the years of being overlooked for roles that might have restarted his acting career, it seems as if the nearly two decades of being laughed at and hated by the world of professional wrestling is the thing keeping him awake at night.

Arquette decides that he's going to become a professional wrestler, only for real this time—no joke, no gimmickry, no promotional stunts. There are a few problems with this idea. First, he's 46 at the time of the decision, and at that age, a lot of wrestlers have realized the limitations of their body. Second, he's out of shape. Third, at some point between his first disastrous appearances in the ring and now, Arquette had a heart attack and has stints in two of his arteries.

A doctor explains all of these complications in a gracious manner, probably thinking Arquette will catch the hint. The actor doesn't hear an overt "no" about returning to the ring, and that's all he doesn't need to hear.

Whether or not Arquette's choice is a wise one is kind of irrelevant to this film. For sure, the more concerned of us will probably watch this documentary and keep hoping that the film's directors, David Darg and Price James, might take Arquette aside, explain that all of the people who aren't directly telling him he shouldn't do this aren't saying they want him to, and maybe express some fear that they're going to capture his death on camera.

Arquette's wife Christina McLarty Arquette definitely doesn't agree, and she certainly doesn't appreciate that her husband is lying about how much he's going to do as he travels the country and to Mexico, looking for training and matches in which to participate. The doctor definitely isn't happy when Arquette ignores a warning about small fractures in his ribs, which could result in full breaks and a punctured lung or two. His good friend, the late Luke Perry, certainly has reached some kind of breaking point with the idea when he has to drive Arquette to the hospital after one match (Perry's frustration with the camera crew is a telltale sign). Arquette's opponent broke a fluorescent light bulb over his head and gouged a hole in the actor's throat.

Obviously, there's an ethical quandary for Darg and James at multiple points over the course of this film. They shouldn't get involved as objective observers, but when we see that neck wound pouring blood, there is the thought that maybe their involvement should have stopped right there and then (If such conversations did occur, a documentary about the making of this documentary might as engaging as this one—if not more so). They're not, after all, recording some event of historical importance. They're just watching a guy devastate his body because of hurt pride, and it's almost certain that the presence of a documentary crew is a tacit sign of at least some encouragement.

The film, thankfully, has a happy ending, in that Arquette doesn't destroy his marriage, doesn't receive any further injuries of such severity, and doesn't die in the ring. We watch with horror, yes, as Arquette is cut and bruised. We do also watch with sympathy, because the filmmakers spend a lot of time with Arquette before his wrestling return and outside the ring, where he deals with rejection and injured pride and mental health issues that have plagued his thoughts and actions for decades.

On the plus side, his dedication to becoming a real wrestler improves certain aspects of his health: He gets fit, stops drinking, and quits smoking. This is admirable. Is it admirable enough to write off the rest of the pain and the family's obvious distress that we witness?

Darg and James don't have or especially want an answer. They're clearly hoping for an inspiring story, about a haunted and troubled man facing his personal demons and professional setbacks in order to achieve a dream he has possessed since childhood. In a way, You Cannot Kill David Arquette gives us that story. The baggage surrounding it, though, is probably worth a lengthy discussion or two.

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