Wrestler was a giant. Doc is weak

Before there was Andre the Giant and the Rock, there was gregarious, bearlike Bruno Sammartino, a sickly immigrant kid who became the Italian Sampson with head-turning exploits in the pro wrestling ring, including effortlessly uprooting 600-pounds-plus Haystacks Calhoun.

Considerably more unwieldy is the documentary “Bruno Sammartino,” a choppy mishmash of a production that attempts to graft war-movie melodrama onto a highlights reel of the career of the longest-reigning WWF (now WWE) world heavyweight champ.

Born in Pizzoferrato, Italy, in 1935, Sammartino and his family made a harrowing escape to America following the Nazi takeover of their rural mountain town.

Through the efforts of Bruno’s iron-willed mother, the Sammartinos would make it to America. The bullied 75-pound 13-year-old would become obsessed with weightlifting, and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, as cobbled together by writer-director Patrea Patrick, those historical elements keep distracting from the main attraction, who is prominently featured in candid interviews conducted some years prior to his death in 2018.

Interspersed with ring announcer hyperbole and testimonials from lifetime fans such as John Cena and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, in 2013, inducted him into the WWE Hall of Fame), Sammartino’s well-deserved screen story fails to do the big guy justice.

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“Bruno Sammartino.” Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center.

Double Exposure Distribution A REENACTMENT shows Nazis threatening the Sammartino family before they f lee Italy for the U.S.