Director: Darren Aronofsky, 15, 109min

Stars: Mickey Rourke, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei

On general release

In Aronofsky’s unsentimental portrait of crippled aspirations and the acute loneliness of failure, Rourke is quite simply magnificent as the fading 1980s wrestling star Randy “The Ram” Robinson. Forever yoked to the memory of his own glory days – Rumblefish, 9½ Weeks and Angel Heart – Rourke comes with a ready written subtext. Like the character he plays, it’s impossible to look at Rourke now and not see the star he once was.

Aronofsky conceals the film’s main weapon for as long as he can. Randy creaks with every painful breath; his huge shoulders hunched as if he’s anticipating a punch to the guts, he lumbers towards a chair and lowers himself with a moan. Children’s drawings are pinned to the walls behind him – his latest bout took place in a school gymnasium. A damp mane of yellow hair curtains his face. Rourke’s performance for the first few minutes is all about his broken physicality. And then we finally get to see his face. Wrecked by Rourke’s own ill-chosen battles, it’s barely recognisable as that of the pretty boy star from two decades ago.

Randy has fallen so far through the ranks of professional wrestling that he can barely afford the doses of painkillers to keep him in the ring. He lives in a trailer park, he’s estranged from his daughter (Wood) and he holds a candle for a local stripper (Tomei). He is a pathetic figure, arrested emotionally at the age when his success was at its height.

Yet Rourke and Aronofsky make him a sympathetic character, even investing in him a kind of stoic dignity as he uncomplainingly prises the staples out of his flesh after a cage fight. The gentlemanly respect between fighters backstage is captured beautifully – a curious code of honour and support among men who minutes before were throwing tables at each other. And that’s what, when his failing heart causes him to retire, Randy misses the most. It’s a peerless study of a man contemplating both the loss of his identity and his world.

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