The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke gives a muscular performance in this knockout drama, writes MICHAEL DWYER

IN A comeback to rival Lazarus, Mickey Rourke has risen from the ashes of a film career that appeared permanently burnt out, to figure as a front-runner for Best Actor at the Oscars. Over the course of a fitfully spluttering career, Rourke has made almost as many attempted comebacks as Frank Sinatra played farewell concert tours, but his riveting performance in The Wrestlersuggests that this time Rourke is back to stay.

Rourke was one of the most exciting acting discoveries of the 1980s in movies as diverse as Diner, Rumble Fish, Eureka, Angel Heartand Barfly. Then he threw it all away, accepting roles in rubbish such as Wild Orchid, Francescoand Shergar. He cultivated a reputation as notoriously difficult, and unwisely returned to the boxing ring, suffering so much physical damage that his appearance was eerily altered through reconstructive surgery.

Against all odds, Rourke returns to prime form in The Wrestler, vividly portraying a washed-up, self-destructive ring performer who peaked in the 1980s. His character, Randy, whose stage name is The Ram, lives in a New Jersey trailer park and works at a warehouse to pay the rent. When he asks for more money, his boss snidely responds, "Has the price of tights gone up?"

Randy’s face is puffy and framed by a luxuriant bleached blond mane. Bloated with steroids, his body is a map to all the many injuries he has sustained. And his life is a catalogue of mistakes and regrets.

The film pointedly illustrates the staginess of professional wrestling as the combatants play to the gallery, although its no-holds-barred bouts are exceptionally violent compared with the risible theatrics of the contests that passed for Saturday afternoon entertainment on British TV in the 1980s. In essence, the screenplay for The Wrestleris just as schematic and contrived. It was written by Robert Siegel, who might well have found it fertile material for lampooning in his former occupation as editor of the satirical website The Onion.

Randy longs to be closer to his lap dancer friend, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), whose own years of using her body to entertain are, like his, coming to an end. In an arch reference to the wrestler's masochistic nature, Cassidy actually recommends he should watch Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

The most predictable narrative strand charts Randy’s quest for reconciliation with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), who doesn’t want to see him because he missed all her birthdays.

Despite those cliches, the film works because Rourke responds to his custom-built role with a memorable performance that exerts a fascination bordering on voyeurism. He immerses himself so deeply under the skin of the wrestler that the parallels with his own career invariably intersect. As art imitates life, the movie exerts a hypnotic hold as it achieves an achingly harsh study in desperation for personal and professional redemption.

The Wrestleralso marks a return to form for director Darren Aronofsky, whose promising career foundered with his pretentious previous picture, The Fountain.

His new film is a disturbing but touching and sometimes unexpectedly funny melodrama redolent of classic boxing pictures.

Like John Huston's Fat City(1972), The Wrestleroffers no false Rocky-style epiphanies, although it cannot resist resorting to that sports movie staple, One Last Bout, which is signposted many scenes in advance.  

Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Starring Mickey Rourke, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei 16 cert, gen release, 109 min ****