Best Ever Movie Performances - Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler

Martin Macdonald - 23 July 2023, 17:03 Share

Mickey Rourke has had a tumultuous career, to say the least.

In 1991, after initially breaking through into Hollywood, Rourke made the decision to return to a career in Boxing, having previously boxed prior to acting.

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Over the 1990s and into the early 200s, he was largely sidelined in Hollywood when it came to leading men roles as he was often cast as a supporting player, albeit in some well-known movies like Man on Fire and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

In 2005, he made a true return to the mainstream with Sin City.

But, in terms of acclaim, the best moment of his career was yet to come and it eventually came via Darren Aronofsky hit, The Wrestler.

The 2008 movie saw Rourke take on the role of Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, a washed-up wrestler yearning for the glory days while continuing to perform in low-key, physically demanding shows for a passionate audience.

What makes Rourke's performance in The Wrestler so good?

When initially presented with the script for The Wrestler, Rourke wasn't keen but knew it had potential.

"I didn't really care for the script, but I wanted to work with Darren and I kind of thought that whoever wrote the script hadn't spent as much time as I had around these kind of people and he wouldn't have spoken the way the dude was speaking," he said.

"And, so Darren let me rewrite all my part and he put the periods in and crossed the T's. So once we made that change I was okay with it."

The life of a wrestler, at the level of the likes of WWE, is often viewed as glamorous due to the money, the fame and the fans.

But, there is an underworld of wrestling that is present throughout the world, where grizzled veterans continue to bash up their bodies to earn a living, or at least part of a living.

What makes Rourke's performance so special is that there is an element of art imitating life.

At the point of his career when Rourke made The Wrestler, he was indeed in a similar situation to Randy the Ram. Once famous and adored by fans, he was on a downward spiral away from the limelight.

Just as the events of The Wrestler helped Randy find some old glory, the movie itself did the same for Rourke.

The actor undoubtedly used these emotions in the story as we feel everything that Randy feels, both emotionally as well as physically.

Even though it is set in the wrestling world, this is truly a gritty drama. As Randy's relationship with his daughter falls apart he falls back into a routine of alcohol, drugs and steroids in order to keep himself going.

This is, rather scarily, the journey that thousands of journeyman wrestlers have taken over the years.

In the end, all Randy has is wrestling, and it just might kill him.

What have people said about Rourke in The Wrestler?

Scott Raab of Esquire said of Rourke: "It's a beauty of a performance, a harrowing of blood and brutal humor -- and no critic will fail to note that Rourke's swollen lonesome clown of a wrestler hanging on long past his time is a version of the actor playing the part. All fine, all true as far as it goes, and utterly irrelevant. This rarest of cinematic wonders -- an honest American movie -- grim and funny and loud as hell, lumpen and lowbrow, saddled with a threadbare and timeworn plot but blessedly devoid of straining for high art, is simply impossible to imagine without Mickey Rourke's heart pumping at its core. Skip the Oscar; give him a Nobel."

The Wrestler has received mostly positive reviews from within the wrestling world. WWE Chairman Vince McMahon is a fan, but others such as Jim Cornette have played down the bleak depiction of a career in wrestling.