MICKEY STRIKES BACK
by Daren Foster

Even Mickey Rourke gets a second chance

“There are no second acts in American lives,” a despondent F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote before dying of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 44, almost as if to prove his point. However, nearly 60 years of posterity and Fitzgerald’s posthumous ascendancy to the heights of literary stardom suggest that just the opposite is true. In America, like nowhere else, lives and careers linger and revive ad infinitum. Reinvention is a key ingredient to the American psyche. The return of the prodigal son from the wilderness back into the folds of respectability runs deep in their national drama.

This cycle plays out prominently these days with celebrity rehabilitation. A once promising star or one at the height of their profession brings about their own fall (preferably through drug use or illicit sexual forays) and is exiled onto the junk heap of wasted talent and unfulfilled potential, only to climb back onto the mountaintop through desperate but gritty perseverance. Robert Downey Jr. and Britney Spears spring immediately to mind.

This year’s model would be Mickey Rourke. His turn as 1980s wrestling star, Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler garnered Rourke an Oscar nomination to go along with his recent Golden Globe win. Mickey’s back, baby! Where have you been for the last 20 years?

The truth is, the man’s been working steadily but far from the spotlight since his last notable year, 1987, when he starred in 3 relatively high profile films, Barfly, Angel Heart and A Prayer for the Dying. Quirky off-screen behaviour, including taking up a boxing career in the early-90s and a seeming obsession with plastic surgery relegated him to the fringes of the film industry until more A-list directors began casting him in character roles over the last decade or so.

Rourke had established himself with a couple fascinating small character turns in Heaven’s Gate and Body Heat. As part of a crack ensemble team in 1982’s Diner, he certified his credentials as a leading man with his portrayal of the Elvis loving, popcorn box penis stuffing, Boogie Sheftel. For a brief time afterwards, Rourke looked like the big breakout star of the cast that included Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Daniel Stern, Timothy Daly, Ellen Barkin and Steven Guttenburg, who would briefly and head-scratchingly supplant Rourke as the biggest movie star of the lot with his Police Academy and 3 Men and a Baby roles.

Rumblefish, The Pope of Greenwich Village and a small role in Nicholas Roeg’s Eureka solidified Rourke’s image as an uncompromising performer intent on pursuing interesting projects over stardom. Yet his offbeat personal life constantly competed with his work in front of the camera. Fame did not seem to fit comfortably on him. He came across as erratic and maybe even a little crazy. Bad script choices only confirmed those suspicions. Despite having perhaps his biggest (or, at least, most notorious) hit with 9 ½ Weeks, Rourke’s star was beginning to dim and by the late-80s, the requisite fall that’s always necessary for a comeback to occur had been set in motion.

Looking back, Mickey Rourke’s acting chops have always been quite limited. While certainly a compelling screen presence, he varies little from role to role if you don’t include the facial reconfiguration he’s undergone rendering him unrecognizable from his early days. He exudes a reptilian-like charm under his greasy hair and dirty fingernails. There’s an undercurrent of brewing rage within all his characters that predictably leads to a full out third act explosion.

Nothing about his role in The Wrestler veers very far from that Mickey Rourke template. Greasy hair? Check. Dirty fingernails? Check. Mickey mumbles? Check. Mickey flashes his bare ass? Twice. Mickey explodes in a psychotic rage? Check. Mickey cries? Yes he does, to show the soft, injured side of his tough guy image and which he used to devastating effect in his role in Sean Penn’s The Pledge, an unrelentingly bleak movie that seemed to first put Rourke back on his road to redemption.

Yes, yes. Rourke worked out, put on weight -- since DeNiro’s Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, the surest way to attract the attention of Academy voters; that and playing handicapped -- and scarred his body for his portrayal of The Ram. He seemed to be living out his own personal demons and disappointments for all of us to watch in its full gory glory. It’s a good performance in what is otherwise a completely forgettable movie. Without the Mickey Rourke narrative, however, The Wrestler would’ve quickly died a deservedly straight-to-video death, if it got made at all.

That is the most surprising aspect of the film. It is a paint-by-numbers, broken-down-man-gets-one-last-shot-at-the-big-time sports story, complete with a stripper who has a heart of gold and an estranged child, shot in post-industrial town where everything’s falling apart. Think Rocky meets Tender Mercies. The Wrestler has the predictable feel of a TV movie of the week. Darren Aronofsky might be the last director you’d imagine offering up this piece of stale filmmaking.

If Mickey Rourke wallowed in obscurity due to missteps and bad choices, Aronofsky inhabited the same territory through a fierce artistic independence and vision which usually eschewed formulae and familiar narrative filmmaking. Pi and The Fountain were marvellous, mind-bending movies that made great demands on the audience to follow along while Requiem for a Dream was equally as thought provoking but with a tendency to adhere to a dreary, worst thing that can happen story structure.

Good thing for Aronofsky he hooked his reins to the upwardly mobile wagon of Mickey Rourke. Hollywood, it seems, was waiting to welcome him back with open arms regardless of how hackneyed and trite the vehicle he triumphantly rode in on. Maybe because The Wrestler was all that, it smoothed the way for Rourke’s return even more as it possessed all the empty bromides of every comeback story Hollywood adores. Who doesn’t love an underdog story? Not only are there second acts in some American lives but thirds and fourths as well. If Mickey Rourke can overcome all his faults and idiosyncrasies, then there’s hope yet for us all.

Too bad F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ticker didn’t hold out long enough for him to see just how mistaken he was.

Unfortunately, Aronofsky chose that routinely cliché-ridden direction for The Wrestler.

CLICK HERE and Read More Daren Foster Columns!WATCH THE SHORT FILMS WRITTEN BY DAREN:

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