Wrestling For Jesus: The Tale of T-Money (2011)
A man from rural South Carolina tries to find solace from the demons of his past by starting a Christian professional wrestling league. His goal is to use wrestling to evangelize his neighbors. However his passion and vision for his ministry are tested when his personal life begins to disintegrate.
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Midway through, a former WFJ wrestler says he left because he felt like Tim was hiding all of the bad things that were going on in his life outside WFJ. What were those bad things? You won't find out here. Tim is still as closed off about "bad things" as he was previously. Yes, his father killed himself (in a throwaway line he says he did it in front of the family) but how did he kill himself? We don't know and the filmmaker never bothers to ask. Tim talk about how he used WFJ to not think about his dad's suicide. Apparently, he's still not thinking about it because we're giving no clues at all to why it happened. His wife has him arrested for domestic assault because they had an argument. What was the argument about? Who knows. They'd been having trouble since his dad's suicide. What was the trouble? Dunno. They do wind up getting divorced, though.The sequences of the wrestling prove to be surreal and, as I'm an atheist, laughable. Tim passive-aggressively bullies the audience up for an altar call telling them "in other parts of the world, people would be running up here...but don't do it to impress me." Missed opportunities abound such as the guy who started off with WFJ wearing an upside down cross on his forehead (because he was evil) to be vilified for wearing an X on his forehead after moving to a secular outfit. Most importantly, after WFJ breaks up, Jesus drops out of the picture for the most part. Tim lives "in sin" with his new girlfriend and apparently grace no longer needs to be said before dinner. Tim goes on to start a secular wrestling organization. This bombshell is dropped in the epilogue. There's a great story buried underneath all of the opaqueness. Whether the filmmaker was lazy or the subject refused to actually address his life remains to be seen. The build up is compelling, dropping bits and piece as it continues, but in the end, it's a tease and frustratingly shallow. My criteria for a documentary is that it shows me a part of life I didn't know about. This did that but it left out some of the most interesting parts.