Starz Denver Film Festival: As The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke Becomes A Mat-inee Idol Again - Page 2

Suffering A Setback

After a particularly brutal match, The Ram lands in the hospital. That’s when he tries to turn his life around. How?

• Get back in the trailer, after making enough to pay the rent.
• Hang up the lime green spandex tights, and keep those competitive juices flowing by taking on the local kids in retro Nintendo games.
• Get a full-time job, even if it’s he has to wear a hairnet and someone's name tag at the deli counter in the local grocery store.
• Make amends with his estranged daughter Stephanie (Wood), who he ignored in his quest to become king of the ring.
• And capture Cassidy’s heart. Those lap dances are getting mighty expensive.

How the Strong Survive

The man mumbles like Rocky Balboa and looks like Dog The Bounty Hunter, with the flowing, dyed-blond locks. Is that really the same Mickey Rourke, The Eighties Ladies Man, The Next James Dean/Marlon Brando who threw it all away to become a boxer and let his face and his brains get beaten to a pulp? He’s almost as unrecognizable here as when he played Marv in the pulp fictional Sin City. Once the essence of cool (The Motorcycle Boy in Rumble Fish, the filthy rich businessman in 9½ Weeks), his face now looks likes it hurts to talk, but the rest of him appears to be in great shape. Let’s hope so, because he certainly sacrifices his pumped-up body for the sake of art.

But the physical show of force, impressive as it is, doesn’t even begin to tell the entire comeback story. Rourke, now 52, lets us see the many sides of The Ram (and himself). Funny, touching, charming, sweet, sour, desperate, reckless, sympathetic, charismatic, enigmatic, humble, human. He sings, he dances. He cries. He stage dives (the “Ram Jam,” is the character’s signature move). And Rourke could just as easily be talking about his movie career when The Ram says, “This is where I belong.”

Here’s the naked truth: Tomei, right, who bared it all in last year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, gives a risky, risque performance and must have trained extra hard to get that pole-wrapping bod. She bumps and grinds on her own stage as Cassidy, then takes it all off (the makeup, that is), to reveal Pam, a mother of a 9-year-old, with the wrinkles and bags under those big, beautiful eyes to prove it. Now that’s courageous.

Those '80s metal songs from Accept (“Balls to the Wall”) , Guns N’ Roses (“Sweet Child O’ Mine”) and other hair bands such as Quiet Riot, Def Leppard and Cinderella, are fun in a kitschy sort of way, but wait for the closing credits to hear Bruce Springsteen’s title song with a tender acoustic touch that’s better than any music heard throughout the film.

Article Author: Michael Bialas

A newspaper editor and former college football player, Michael Bialas makes sports his business but exploring and reviewing music, movies, TV and other forms of pop culture are among the games he enjoys playing now.
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