Wrestler, The

First things first, let's deal with the misleading publicity about The Wrestler being Mickey Rourke's first film for 15 years. Anyone with even a passing interest in film will know that the man with the interesting face has been pretty busy in recent times, fronting Sin City in 2005 and providing excellent support in Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003) and Animal Factory (2000).

What is fair to say is that even roles as strong as these are beneath a man who burst on the scene like a modern-day Brando. With his fine looks, shy manner and soft voice, it's perhaps more accurate to say Rourke initially resembled the young Al Pacino. And for a while, it seemed inevitable that the charismatic star of Diner and Rumble Fish would play roles of the calibre of Michael Corleone.

No sooner had the - frankly shocking - 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) made him a bona fide A-lister than the wheels came off for Philip Andre Rourke Jr. At the height of his fame, he returned to his "first love" boxing. In 1989 he made a soft porn flick, Wild Orchid, and married the leading lady Carr? Otis. He made a big deal about donating money to the IRA. And then he cut off his little finger to impress his estranged wife. He also developed a thing for Chihuahuas which inadvertently led to his walking off the film Luck Of The Draw, a bizarre move that did little to repair his already tarnished reputation.

Unhirable and undesirable, Mickey Rourke during his lost years has a lot in common with his character Randy 'The Ram' Robinson. The biggest name in pro wrestling 20-odd years ago, the man born Robin Razminsky now finds himself working in front of dozens rather than thousands of fans. And when he's not playing the wrestling equivalent of pub gigs, he's eking out just enough of a living shifting boxes at a supermarket that he can afford the upkeep on the sort of rundown trailer usually encountered on episodes of 'Cops'.

Divorced from his wife, estranged from his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), and with the closest thing to a companion being Marisa Tomei's single-mum stripper, Randy seems out for the count. But then two things happen. First a promoter suggests restaging the greatest bout of Robinson's career against arch rival The Ayatollah (real-life wrestler and former karate champion Ernest Miller). Then 'The Ram' suffers a heart attack. If anything ought to spell the end of his career, it's a myocardial infarction. But will the lure of one last day in the spotlight prove too great for the former champ?

Watching The Wrestler, it's clear that i) Darren Aronofsky has done his research, and ii) part of this research involved watching Beyond The Mat until it had burned onto his retinas. Indeed, it's tempting to see Randy Robinson as a composite of the three remarkable "workers" profiled in Barry Blaustein's excellent documentary: Terry Funk, the veteran unable to leave the spotlight even though his body is telling him to do so; Mick Foley, the intelligent family man who'll do anything to 'pop' a crowd even if it does upset his loved ones, and Jake 'The Snake' Roberts, the former WWE star ruined by drug abuse and estranged from his daughter.

The air of realism that percolates through the picture is further enhanced by the presence of top ring warriors such as Ernest Miller, Ron Killings (currently working for the WWE as R-Truth) and Brian Rollins, aka The Blue Meanie. The pick of the real workers, though, is Dylan Summers, a soft-spoken, shaggy-haired man otherwise known as Necro Butcher. For years Summers has toured America, slamming opponents through burning tables and broken glass and allowing himself to be set about with everything including the kitchen sink. In The Wrestler, Summers works a hardcore match with 'The Ram' that's so vicious, it might even shock die-hard fans. As for those for whom wrestling means two fat blokes gut-barging one another around a leisure centre in Kettering, you might want to avert your eyes during these more excessive moments.

It's during The Wrestler's bloodiest set-piece that you can easily forget that this isn't just a film about guys in tights fake-beating one another up, but the story of a man trying to find honour and acceptance in a world bent on grinding him down. As such, the film has a lot in common with dramas like Half Nelson and Aronofsky's own Requiem For A Dream. Every bit as good as his breakthrough film at documenting the struggle for survival and nobility, it's hard to understand why the director has long seemed so keen to swap the kitchen sink for elaborate sci-fi fantasy. Mundanity, grime, thwarted ambition - this is where Aronofsky is most at home.

If Aronofsky seems as bent on self-destruction as Randy Robinson, his cast come on like people desperately trying to seize a long-awaited opportunity. Ever since winning an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny, Marisa Tomei has been more at sea than Captain Ahab. Now given a role worthy of her talent, the star of garbage like The Guru delivers a performance almost as eye-catching as Rourke's tour de force - in other years she might have won as many awards as Rourke. It's long been said that strippers and wrestlers have a lot in common, and to see Tomei's Cassidy losing out on lapdances to her younger colleagues is to remember that she too is a fantasist fighting a losing battle with time.

Whatever Aronofsky, Tomei and Rachel Evan Wood might bring to the picture, The Wrestler belongs to Mickey Rourke. With his puffy face, shattered hands and dead eyes, there's something sad about saying the actor is ideally cast as Randy Robinson. In the end, it's not the physical degeneration that accounts for the quality of his performance. Just check out the scene where 'The Ram' is asked to work on the supermarket deli counter. As he makes his way through the back of the building towards the shop floor, we hear the roar of an expectant crowd. Randy Robinson is heading into the arena again, only this time his audience is an old lady who wants some potato salad and a guy who's really particular about how his ham is sliced. Ignominy, defiance, shame, showmanship - Rourke displays all these qualities during the sequence, sometimes even when he has his back to the camera. The way Rourke plays it, this is a scene about a great actor reminding us that he's returned from the back of beyond.