Passions of Mickey Rourke  a vain exercise in S&M

Rating: 1/10 (13 January 2009)

I am afraid but I have to dissent from the popular opinion and disagree with awards givers and most of the people so fervently complementing this film for veracity, poignancy, greatness of directorial and acting success. I strongly disagree with all these opinions.
The film is predictable, boring and suffers from bad taste. The situation of aged 'broken down piece of meat' wrestler is not typical, nor believable, neither interesting. It is a story of poorly lived life (not developed by the scenario) of contemporary gladiator. His life is paralleled with the life of a 'virtuous' stripper, who he intends for his sweat-heart. Do you know why most sympathetic characters in this sort of films (and there many of those) are always a drunkard, a prostitute, a drug addict? Do you know people like this? I do not! So where is the truth, the poignancy, do you wish to be like them, do you wish your children to be like them? Is this an example of who you do not to be?
The plot is also attempt to compare the wrestler's wounds with the passions of Christ. OK, if that was an intent then why it was not developed at all; just a statement or allusion to the fact does not make it meaningful - the situation is very contrived and unreal. More precisely, the film is about Mr. Rourke's passions as he correctly stated in a TV interview.
I do feel sorry for the great human material named Mickey Rourke, who was endowed by nature with great body, face, good deal of talent and who squandered it all, wasted in the orgy of drugs, violence and self-indulgence. I do hope that he will be able to remake and reinvent himself - but this is no reason, at least for me, to take part in his continuous Sado-Mazochism, evident in "The Wrestler".