Championship Bout

Spoiling for a Fight and Still kicking Rourke Gives his Performance the Ultimate Punch.
By Morgan P Salvo

Mickey Rourke’s career as well as his face has been through a multitude of changes. He was once great, faltered heavily, fell flat on his face and slowly but surely picked himself up again. The mystique of The Wrestler is how close the story hits home to Rourke’s real life. I wouldn’t call it a comeback for Rourke but rather an “about time”. After his rise to fame in the 80’s, followed by his stint with boxing and subsequent weird-guy tabloid filler, Mickey had been reduced to bad movies and bit parts. There are a few in which he truly shined, such as Marv in Sin City, and stunning performances in The Pledge, Spin, Animal Factory and Get Carter. In The Wrestler he finally puts all his cards on the table, hanging himself out like a skinned deer for us all to gawk at. A true car wreck, we are unable to avert our eyes.

The plot of The Wrestler is nothing new, using a tired old formula you’ve seen before. But with the blending of gritty realism, honest performances and tight storytelling this movie is close to phenomenal. It’s a character study of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, his fall from grace and next/last chance for greatness. The parallels to Rourke begin immediately – physically battered, broken down, beat up, empty and drained, he still clings to some kind of hope.
We follow the squalor of Ram’s life, living in his trailer or sleeping in his van, hanging out in seedy bars and strip joints, working in a super market to pay the bills, and competing in lower level wrestling matches in Legion of Honor Vet’s clubs. Punch-drunk and wallowing in solitude, Ram doesn’t want to change but his life is becoming a bigger cage than the wrestling ring. After a life threatening incident, he tries to put his life together with his estranged daughter and get back to a semblance of normalcy.
Getting in touch with his inner beast, Rourke dominates 99.9% of screen time. With weight lifting, hair coloring, tanning, tossing back his long blonde mane to adjust his hearing aid, he nails every nuance and every stroke, painting The Ram with all the right flourishes. Only a few times does this man resemble Mickey Rourke. Gone are any boyish handsome features of yester year.
Marisa Tomei as Cassidy (the stripper Ram falls for) gets to tear up the screen with a multidimensional take on what could’ve been a stereotypically played role. Evan Rachel Wood appears as daughter Stephanie who’s tormented by dad’s loser antics. All three characters are bruised, emotionally scarred or tainted by life’s cruel twists of fate. They all have problems seemingly too enormous to deal with.
Not one performance slips by; they all surge with heartrending pain from way, way down deep. My only gripe was that the daughter/father relationship at times feels contrived but then again it allows some of the best acting in the movie. No matter how incredulous the script, the knock-out cliché-free performances are all worthy of the praise and attention, so you tend to forgive any flaws.
Director Darren Aronofsky shows an impressive style that’s a far cry from the other movies he’s known for (Pi, Requiem for a Dream). Shooting in cinema verite, he does a bang-up job with the hand-held camera, following characters with long un-edited shots, often focusing on Rourke’s top-knot/ponytail. Aronofsky also employs a soundtrack that’s laden with heavy metal glam rock, emphasizing Ram’s hold on the past.
Simple yet powerful, The Wrestler is a drenched in pathos and bathed in excruciatingly sad heart breaking moments but somehow manages to rise above it all. After seeing this movie I thought I could easily go about my day, but Randy the Ram stayed indelibly ingrained in my head. Rourke as the puffy behemoth steeped in shame has done the impossible, taking a character similar to Raging Bull’s protagonist Jake LaMotta and giving him more depth and intricate insight to one man’s pain and suffering. It’s a hellava performance. Long live Mickey Rourke.

The Wrestler
Starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Ward
Directed by Daren Aronofsky

 4 stars