The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)

The trailer-trash scrag-end of the American social spectrum makes a fertile hunting ground for '80s A-list pin-ups looking to prove their acting chops for once and for all. Think Kim Basinger as Eminem's grotesquely self-centered mother in 8 Mile. But casting Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler goes one better: he not only looks like 40 miles of rough road without the need for any make-up, but has also, with his fall from stardom and ruinous attempt to reinvent himself as a boxer, actually travelled quite a way in the shoes of his character, an ageing showboating wrestler held together by bits of tape and a fragile pride.
No Rocky, this: his only relationship, barring an estranged daughter who hates his guts and various backslappers with long memories, is with a stripper whose understanding of the similarity between them, i.e. a dependence on their bodies for their sustenance, doesn't patly lead to a meeting of hearts. And to cap it all, it's made abundantly clear that while we're dealing with entertainers of moronically baying crowds, there isn't even sporting excellence at stake: the wrestlers are just minimum-wage baited bears doomed to agree tenderly to bloodily mangle each other as little as the punters will let them get away with.
None of this is exactly surprising; not the truths behind the meat-headed spectacle or, least of all, the trajectory of the down-at-heel former champ out for one last shot at glory or redemption. What does save its bacon is a merciful refusal to sentimentalise, and Rourke himself. You really can't imagine anyone else being able to make it work.

6/10