Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows
It’s 1997, and the World Wrestling Federation is facing fierce competition from Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling. When the legendary Bret “The Hitman” Hart is offered a lucrative opportunity to jump ship to the WCW, WWF mastermind Vince McMahon appeals to his sense of loyalty and lures him back with a 20-year contract. But when McMahon abruptly reneges on the deal, Hart reconnects with the competition, paving the way for one of the most notorious events in the history of professional wrestling: the Montreal Screwjob. Widely hailed as the greatest wrestling documentary of all time, Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows is an engrossing look at the life and career of Bret Hart and the Hart dynasty. Granted unprecedented access to the secret world of wrestling, director Paul Jay presents a real-world narrative far more dramatic than any story created for the ring.
Starting as a biography of Bret Hart and the Hart family wrestling dynasty before gradually morphing into a David vs. Goliath tale of betrayal and humiliation that gave audiences an unexpected glimpse into the inner machinations of the business, the aptly named Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows is among the very first wrestling documentaries to truly go behind the scenes of the drama. Produced in Canada, written and directed by Paul Jay who was granted unprecedented access to Vince McMahon’s wrestling empire and gets closer to the industry’s most transformative moment than any other filmmaker could’ve dreamed in a story that seems to write itself.
Bret Hart and his own familial relations with his wife couldn’t have been more strained during filming and you catch traces of their tensions leading to an eventual divorce, but as a subject Bret Hart couldn’t be more charismatic or comforting to be around. Honest and outspoken while critical of the newer sleazier creative shift in Vince McMahon’s ratings war with Ted Turner, Bret emerges from the catastrophic betrayal mostly unscathed and intact.
Where it gets very tense at first involves scenes of his father’s wrestling training basement where tryouts get put into excruciating submission holds, touching on the intensity of father Stu Hart’s wrestling family dynasty also comprised of wrestlers Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart and the British Bulldog. While a tight knit family with a complete passion for and commitment to the art of wrestling, one gets the sense Stu Hart was despite his age and frail appearance was a real hard ass feared by his children.
Initially shown at film festivals before being aired on A&E and the Documentary Channel as well as BBC Two, the film initially found itself in legal limbo after Vince McMahon feared the film would add fuel to the flames generated by the Montreal Screwjob. Though McMahon’s own efforts to block the film resulted in some nixed distribution deals domestically or internationally, Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows quickly ascended the ranks as one of the greatest Canadian documentaries ever made.
Winner of the Best Canadian Feature Documentary award in 1999, Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows was as much of an expose of the wrestling business and portrait of its beleaguered performer as it was a classic tale of trying to find a moral compass in an otherwise amoral profession led by a creative genius/monster if you will. Spawning the character of the ‘evil Mr. McMahon’ which resulted in some wild storylines that even landed the WWE’s chief creator in the ring.
Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows is one of the most essential documentary re-releases of the year. A gift that keeps on giving for fans of wrestling and/or the documentary medium in general, the film invariably played a major role in the development of the hit Vice documentary series Dark Side of the Ring which also touches on Paul Jay’s film in the first season.
While some detractors rightly point out the film is mostly slanted towards Bret Hart’s version of the story, the film nevertheless captured the wrestling industry’s then-most controversial moment in real time. Few, if any, wrestling documentaries manage to so thoroughly yank the rug out from under the viewer and expose the man behind the curtain we’re not supposed to be paying any attention to.
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