Rourke is comeback kid in more ways than one in 'The Wrestler'

Photo by Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight Pictures, Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Marisa Tomei and Mickey Rourke (as Robin Ramzinski, aka Randy "The Ram" Robinson) look ready to grapple in "The Wrestler."

Like a horror movie that keeps its scary-looking villain in the shadows before his shock revelation, "The Wrestler" is almost six minutes old before we get a good look at fiftysomething comeback kid Mickey Rourke, the once beautiful star of "Diner" and "Rumble Fish" who, on Thursday, became a deserving Best Actor Oscar nominee for the moving, harrowing performance seen here.

Apparently remodeled by years of hard living, a 1990s stint as a professional boxer, and a few rounds with the surgeon's knife, Rourke's face now resembles "a mask of hardened lava and plumber's caulk," according to Alessandra Stanley, writing this week in The New York Times. ("Just bring the cheap hurt," Rourke says in "The Wrestler," and journalists, apparently, are happy to oblige.)

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Commercial Appeal film critic reviews two films: The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky, and Inkheart Watch »

Photo by Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Marisa Tomei and Mickey Rourke (as Robin Ramzinski, aka Randy "The Ram" Robinson) look ready to grapple in "The Wrestler."

The Wrestler

Back in the late '80s, Randy "The Ram" Robinson was a headlining professional wrestler. Now, 20 years later, he ekes out a living performing for ...

Rating: R for violence

Length: 105 minutes

Released: December 17, 2008 Limited

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Ernest Miller, Marisa Tomei, Todd Barry, Evan Rachel Wood

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Writer: Robert D. Siegel

More info and showtimes »

The actor's pumped-up body is just as awe-inspiring, even if the rocky muscles seem to be sliding with age, like glacier ice, beneath the skin. Long, blond, heavy-metal-band hair extensions and a spray Tan-in-a-Can complexion complete the fearsome transformation.

The story of a once celebrated, now down-and-out professional wrestler eking out a living on the fringes of show business while dreaming of a return to greatness, "The Wrestler" represents a perfect match of actor to character and back story to script. Audiences will see the film's alternately lovable and grotesque hero, Robin Ramzinski (professionally known as Randy "The Ram" Robinson), as a stand-in for Rourke, a so-called underdog who could beat you up and steal your girl. "I'm an old broken-down piece of meat," says Rourke/Randy, who follows this bit of brutal candor with a tug on the heartstrings: "And I'm alone."

Calling "The Wrestler" a comeback film is a bit of an exaggeration: Rourke (his face augmented with prosthetic makeup) was one of the lead characters in the ensemble cast of "Sin City," one of the biggest hits of 2005. But "The Wrestler" represents Rourke's return to critical as well as audience favor; On Jan. 11, he won a Golden Globe for best actor, while the film won the top award, the Golden Lion, at the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered.

"The Wrestler" may represent a truer comeback for its director, Darren Aronofsky, who followed his distinctive, low-budget indie dramas "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream" with a true folly, "The Fountain" (2006), an epic, centuries-spanning cosmic flop starring Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and, apparently, the tree of life. Scripted by Robert D. Siegel, "The Wrestler" is as down to earth as "The Fountain" was out of this world.

Working on location in New Jersey with a relatively low budget, Aronofsky uses handheld cameras to capture most of the action, a strategy that lends a feeling of intimacy to the scenes; the camera often trails Rourke by just a couple of steps, which makes the viewer feel like a tagalong participant in Randy's life, as the wrestler -- surviving on a diet of human growth hormones, tall boys and pain pills -- lopes from his trailer-park home to the high-school gymnasiums where he fights, the supermarket where he earns a steady paycheck and the strip club where he tries to establish a relationship with Cassidy (real name: Pam), another working-class entertainer-with-an-alias: a beautiful but aging dancer. Cassidy is played by an uninhibited Marisa Tomei, whose frequent nudity adds to the aura of almost tabloid voyeurism established by Rourke's unabashed presence.

Randy also, clumsily, tries to connect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), the only character besides Randy and Cassidy who gets much screen time. "The Wrestler," essentially, is a one-man show.

The film is most convincing -- and entertaining -- as a behind-the-scenes look at the seedy world of barely professional wrestling, an increasingly violent and "punk" milieu where staple guns and broomsticks wrapped in barbed wire have been added to the arsenal of brass knuckles and folding chairs. Stripped of such novel detail, the story is simple and even conventional and sentimental (Randy is a character with a literally damaged heart).

But just when you're starting to think the movie is making a bit much of the Jesus aspect of Randy's suffering, the filmmakers acknowledge their gambit by having the dancer tell the wrestler that he reminds her of the star of "The Passion of the Christ" -- "You have the same hair," she says.

"The Wrestler" is exclusively at Malco's Studio on the Square.

-- John Beifuss, 529-2394

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