The Wrestler

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

A spellbinding performance by Mickey Rourke cannot save a poor film.

Mickey Rourke's Oscar-nominated performance as an ageing professional wrestler has magic in it. In part, it is irresistible because the story of his character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, seems to rhyme with Rourke's own career, which never really delivered on its early raffish promise and which floated in the doldrums in the 90s while he returned to his first love, boxing.

But there is more than a poetic synergy at work here. This is a performance of heroic devotion, and not just because Rourke submits, in method-actor tradition, to appalling treatment, including being worked over with a staple gun: he also lets us see beyond his hulking, dilapidated frame into a character of complexity and fragility.

It might have snared the Oscar if it had not been the heart and soul of a pretty second-rate film. The screenplay, by virtual novice Robert Siegel, is at times eye-wateringly contrived, full of clunky dialogue that treats us - and, worse, Rourke - like idiots.

Tomei, as a stripper with a heart of gold, is given a character with as much depth as an action figurine and the film, which repeatedly invites us to sympathise with the indignities she must suffer, is not above getting her up on stage for a gratuitous lip-smacking examination. To add insult to injury, we have to think up the ending for ourselves.

Randy, a legend of the pro circuit in the 80s, but now "an old, broken-down piece of meat" is a man who doesn't know how to make his way in the world. In the ring and the dressing room, he finds companionship and respect (one of the film's incidental pleasures is watching wrestlers prearrange their moves according to a complex, unspoken hierarchy) but he knows that "the world don't give a shit about me".

Aronofsky has his cinematographer, the great Maryse Alberti, work with a handheld camera that tracks Randy, sometimes barely a pace behind him, along the twisting trails of his daily life. Combined with sparingly used jump cutting, it creates a cine verite effect and works to keep us as much on edge as he is. Other scenes, notably one where Randy buys bodybuilding drugs, lend the film a documentary feel.

But when the film brings him face-to-face with other characters, it looks threadbare, mannered and artificial. He goes looking for part of his past, but the result is a cliched and implausible subplot. It's a shame that the price of seeing one of the truly great performances of this or any year is sitting through the dross that contains it.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

Director:

Darren Aronfosky

Running time:

109 mins

Rating:

R16, contains violence, offensive language, drug use & sex scenes