Power Slam's Review: Hitman Hart Wrestling With Shadows

Twenty-four hours and 180 miles up the M1 later, the Colour Commentary road show pulled into Sheffield for the opening film of the city's fifth interational documentry festival; the world premiere of Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows.
    Bearing in mind that wrestling does not rank too highly amonst John Q.
Documentry Fanatic's extracurricular passions, the aforementioned billing should immediately allude film-making Wrestling With Shadows really is.
    Of course, award-winning director Paul Jay's timing could not be better: the year his crew spent with Bret Hart formed not only the most tumultous 12 months of "The Hitman's" career, but also unravelled into one of the most scandalous stories in pro wrestling history.
    The cameras begin rolling in October 1996 as Hart reaches the decision to reject a three-year, $9 million offer from WCW and commit himself to the WWF for an unprecedented 20 years. Leaving Mcmahon would be like leaving his father, Bret reveals, and goes on to a parallel how similarly intimidating he finds Vince and Stu.
    As the saga unfolds, we follow Hart from arena to arena and expirance firsthand his reaction to the fans gradually backing him intobecoming an anti-American heel ("I don't think there are any good guys anymore --
everyone's a bad guy"), his paranoiaover Shawn Michaels using his refereeing gig at SummerSlam '97 to steal Bret's "bad guy heel", and hisanguish when Vince reveals that he wants out -- citing financial peril and on inability to complete with Ted Turner -- just one year into "The Hitman's" contract.
    Familiar WWF footage is interspersed with plenty of backstage revelstions, Including an eye-opening scene in which Shawn Michaels engages friendly horseplay with Bret'd son Blade prior to an Autumn 1997 house show at Madison Square Garden. The Hart family's wrestling history is also traced, and the unwitting viewer is made privy to a rather disturbing collection of audio tapes compiled in Stu's legendary torture chamber, the dungeon.
    Of course, the jewel in Wrestling With Shadows crown is the build-up to and capturing of events on the night of The Survivor Series double-crossing in Montreal. Without wanting to give much away, let's just say that any dispute over who $crewed who on November 9 th, 1997 is laid to rest irrevocably by some opportune lens-pointing and wire-wearing inside the Molson Centre locker room.
    With "outsider" cameras granted virtual free reign in normally secretive WWF backstage domain, Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows inevitably exposes aspects of the business its critics are so eager to brandish against it.
However, Bret's unashamed openness indiscussing the inner machinations of the sport should prove insightful enough to silent even the most outspoken kmow-it-all.
    Already avalible on video in the States and no doubt doing the rounds in the UK underground, Wrestling With Shadows will apparently not be shownon BBC2 until the Spring of 1999. When you do eventually receive the opportunity to view it, do not pass it up. This high-calibre, fly-on-the-wall expos'e deserves your attention, Bret Hart fan or not.