The Wrestler

Early in The Wrestler we see Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke) preparing for a fight and concealing a razor blade in his straps. Is he gonna fight dirty, we wonder? But this isn't some vicious streetfighting scene, it's "wrestling" - that highly staged, over-the-top display of big-muscled men throwing each other around the ring and secretly whispering to each other what they're about to do. The razor blade is for Randy to surreptitiously slice his own forehead to get some blood running for the punters.

Big and lumbering, his butcher's shop face etched with scarring and regret, Mickey Rourke here makes a surprise return to the screen playing a man who has pissed away his life, his career and his health. The film tells the actor's own story in all its pitifulness. In the late 80s Rourke was Hollywood's edgiest leading man, the magnetic star of Nine and a Half Weeks, Angel Heart, Barfly and Year of the Dragon. Arrogance and his own demons made him a nightmare to work with, and soon nobody wanted to. Uncaring, he tossed in acting for half of the 90s to pursue a youthful dream as a boxer, got his handsome face smashed up good and proper, and returned to movies a forgotten, broken man scrambling for bit parts.

A glimpse of his once shining talent could be seen behind the heavy makeup of his role in Sin City (2004) but no one was prepared to bank on Rourke as a leading man until Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) offered him the lead in this - for no money, and on strict conditions of obeisance. Aronofsky's faith has been rewarded with a mesmerising effort from Rourke, essentially playing himself. Shot in naturalistic style - there's none of the flashy tricks of his earlier work on show - the film is Aronofsky's saving grace too.

Randy, a champion back in the 80s, now stacks supermarket shelves in between sporadic wrestling matches staged in high school gyms. He can barely make the rent on his trailer - what little he makes goes on steroids - and his 20-ish daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) refuses to see him. He's popular among the trailer park kids, sometimes inviting them over to play the Nintendo game in which his younger self is an avatar. Appropriately for a man festering on the bottom rung of showbiz, his only real friend seems to be a stripper at the local pole dancing bar (a sympathetic and gamely nude Marisa Tomei).  

This devastating character study explores what happens when a man who only feels alive in the ring is told he can't wrestle any more. There are moments of aching sadness - such as an autograph session in a gym where the worn-out bodies of old wrestlers look like the decaying hulks of great ships - and brutish hilarity in the fights themselves, such as when an audience member gives Randy his artificial leg and urges him to whack his opponent with it. ("Use his leg!" screams the crowd.) Randy's climactic thank you to the fans who have stood by him sounds eerily like an Oscar speech; expect a reprise at the actual ceremony in February.

The Wrestler screens from 15 Jan.   

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