The Wrestler is about one thing – Mickey Rourke – and that makes the movie both fascinating and limited. This is at once a vanity and an anti-vanity piece for the once-heralded, long-disgraced actor, who plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson – a once-heralded, now-disgraced professional wrestling star of the 1980s. His body a wreck, his 15 minutes long past, Robinson nonetheless haunts community centers and VFW halls grappling with far younger men in search of some sort of ghostly glory. Much of The Wrestler catalogs Robinson’s daily struggle to keep his sad life afloat: working a day job at a grocery store; getting his stringy tendrils bleached for the next match; sleeping in the back of his van after he’s failed to pay the rent. As dismal as the vignettes seem, Robinson endures them with pluck, determination, even dignity. Indeed, the picture’s highlight is a scene behind the deli counter of that grocery store, where Robinson teases and cajoles the shoppers, turning the serving of lunchmeat into a performance and the waiting customers into an audience. The guy is a born entertainer, and The Wrestler reminds us, so is Rourke. From director Darren Aronofsky, taking a break from the intellectual delirium of Pi and The Fountain.
