The Wrestler is a movie about second chances.  Not just for its characters but its actors, notably Rourke but also (long ago Oscar winner) Tomei and Wood, and director Aronofsky, who stumbled with clumsy Rachel Weisz love letter The Fountain, but picked the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with this movie.

Rourke, pumped-up, wrecked, and resembling Axl Rose, is Randy “The Ram” Robinson.  A wrestler of Hulk Hogan stature in 1985 (as the open credit’s entertaining crawl over magazine clippings reveal), Ram's reduced to performing in school gyms and community halls twenty years down the line.

When not trading choreographed but bruising blows with fellow fighters for dwindling on-the-door profits, Randy makes ends meet hefting boxes at a local supermarket, kipping in his van when locked out of his trailer for overdue rent, and visiting a peeling-paint strip joint to hang with Cassidy (Tomei), an over-the-hill stripper flattered by Randy’s continued attention.

After his health takes a serious fold-up chair blow to the back of the head, the charming meathead attempts a reconciliation with his goth daughter (Wood) and discovers wrestling his demons is harder than any pre-determined bout in the ring. 

Award nominations are certainty for Rourke, who digs deep into his past to give his most humane performance to date.

His childlike Randy, first seen sitting post-match in a school classroom, is riveting whether clumsily sweet-talking Cassidy on a low-rent date, revealing painful truths to his daughter, mugging through minimum wage jobs, playing an ancient videogame of himself, or realising that, with his hearing aid and glasses, he's getting old. 

The wrestling scenes, shot at real venues by documentary cinematographer Maryse Alberti and made gladiatorial by the bass heavy sound, are a fitting tribute to oft-mocked athletes who risk injury and self-harm (check out staple gun wielding Necro Butcher for details) in the name of a good show, with Rourke taking painful looking licks.

Nothing from the director of Requiem for a Dream is going to abide by sports movie convention, and The Wrestler refuses to provide anything as ordinary as a happy ending, no matter how much you want it.

But, Randy’s climactic recreation of a former glory befits a film about someone unable to prevent himself spinning out of control, and is a smackdown conclusion to a mature, powerful tearjerker.

Rob Daniel