Film

Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows

Shot with startling backstage access, this cinema-verite documentary follows Bret Hart through his final year in the WWF, capturing the internal politics of a business built on scripted outcomes. Then the cameras keep rolling during the real, unscripted betrayal of the Montreal Screwjob. It plays like a thriller, and works whether or not you care about wrestling at all — it's about trust, control, and who gets to write the ending.

TMDb rating7.5

If you liked this

Beyond the Mat1999

Made in the same era by an outsider granted similarly unusual access, it goes even further backstage, following broke veterans and desperate rising stars once the cameras of sports entertainment stop pretending everything's fine.

But Messier and sadder than Hitman Hart, juggling several stories rather than one tight, dramatic arc.

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Dark Side of the Ring2019

This anthology series devotes entire episodes to wrestling's darkest real incidents — including its own version of the Montreal Screwjob — with new interviews that complicate everything you think you already know.

But Uneven production and some disputed talking heads; leans into true-crime pacing that won't suit everyone.

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The Wrestler2008

Mickey Rourke's comeback performance as a broken-down journeyman finds the same loneliness and physical toll behind the curtain that Bret Hart lived through, fictionalized but devastatingly true to the culture.

But Purely fictional and slower-paced than a documentary, with no real wrestling history attached.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

F for Fake1973

Both films are ultimately about the machinery of constructed truth — Welles stages a documentary about lying the way wrestling stages reality, and both ask what's left once you've seen the trick.

Orson Welles's essay film about a master art forger dissolves the line between documentary and con, using trick edits and false confessions to ask whether authenticity ever really existed in performance at all.

But Deliberately slippery and non-linear — it's playing games with you rather than telling a straightforward story.

F for Fake poster
More like this (7)

The Iron Claw2023

A big, star-studded drama about the real Von Erich wrestling dynasty, tracing how ambition and a controlling patriarch turned a family business into tragedy — the emotional cost this film only gestures at.

But A scripted, cinema-friendly retelling rather than raw documentary footage, and it leans hard into melodrama.

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Nature Boy2017

Ric Flair's own reckoning with excess, ego and decades on the road, told with the same warts-and-all candor, from a wrestler who lived through the business's other great eras.

But Sprawling and less structurally dramatic — a whole messy life story rather than one explosive night.

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Andre the Giant2018

A tender, surprisingly moving look at wrestling's most mythic figure, made with the same care for the human being underneath the character that this film brings to Bret Hart.

But Gentler and less conflict-driven — this is elegy rather than exposé.

Andre the Giant poster

Fighting with My Family2019no page yet

A much lighter, funnier entry point into the same world — a British teenager's real rise through WWE's system — good if you want the family-and-wrestling story without the heartbreak.

But Broad, crowd-pleasing biopic comedy that barely touches the industry's darker, more manipulative side.

The Resurrection of Jake The Snake2015no page yet

A brutal, intimate documentary about addiction and redemption starring one of wrestling's most tragic figures, proof the genre can go even rawer than Bret Hart's story.

But Very heavy going, focused on addiction recovery rather than the business machinations that drive Hitman Hart.

Man on the Moon1999

Kaufman used wrestling to test how far an audience would follow a lie, the same question Vince McMahon put to Bret Hart in Montreal — just approached from the other side of the rope.

Jim Carrey vanishes into Andy Kaufman, the comedian who blurred performance and reality so thoroughly he actually wrestled women on stage as part of the bit — kayfabe run as an experiment from outside the business.

But Glossy, mainstream biopic packaging around a genuinely strange subject; it softens some of Kaufman's more abrasive edges.

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The Act of Killing2012

Both films use a crew's access to catch people performing their own myths until the performance cracks and the real thing underneath becomes visible, live, on film.

Indonesian death squad leaders re-enact their real mass killings as movie scenes of their own design, in a documentary so unnerving it visibly changes how its subjects see themselves on camera.

But Genuinely harrowing, dealing with real genocide rather than sports theater — this is not comparable entertainment and shouldn't be approached as such.

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Recommended by

Beyond the Mat, Dark Side of the Ring, Andre the Giant, Nature Boy