Requiem for a wrestler.

Rating: 5/10 (28 November 2009)

The performances are uniformly fine, especially Mickey Rourke's dilapidated wrestler with his battered face. But Marisa Tomei is excellent too. She's a lap dancer and a bit more worn than Mona Lisa Vitti was. Rachel Evan Wood isn't on screen much but gets passing grades if only for her classically beautiful profile.
The movie stinks, although I don't think it knows it. It creaks at every joint, like Rourke, as it reaches for epic tragedy -- a proud man who will never allow himself to be beaten, even if it costs him his life, although in this instance the effort can hardly be worth it. Rourke simply knows the ropes of this phony, thoroughly choreographed business to well to take it as seriously as the script demands. The arena is so corrupt that a pissing contest acquires Olympic proportions by comparison.
The script is out of Screen writing 101 or McKee's textbook. First, show us something of the world the protagonist inhabits. It's a strenuous performance in the ring with real staples, barbed wire, chisels, chairs, and whatnot causing the blood to flow like Niagara while a thousand fans shriek with pleasure at each new brutality. Afterwards the actors ask each other, "Was you okay with the staples?" There must be a fragile romance developed between the clobbered lead and some babe in an equally degraded job. Throw in a member of the hero's alienated family, preferably a stunning young woman, for the thirteen-year-olds who may otherwise be bored when no one is having his body wrapped in barbed wire.
There must be a few set speeches at important moments. Confessions and apologies are always good, but so are barely controlled hysterical outbursts. "I know I'm just a hunk of meat. I'm alone and I deserve to be alone. I just don't want you to hate me." (A tear should roll down the speaker's cheek.) Marlon Brando had such a set speech with Rod Steiger in the back seat of a taxi but the lines glowed with verisimilitude, Brando delivered them with perfection, without pandering, he didn't have to cry. And the speech told us something that we didn't know, that hadn't already been shown to us. Rourke's speech only spells out what we can easily intuit. The writer doesn't trust us to be perceptive enough to have picked it all up. Tugging our heart strings in a way as cheap as the faux contests in the ring.
Dramatic structure -- triumph followed by tragedy followed by triumph followed by tragedy followed by -- where were we? The direction is rudimentary. Every significant statement is a close up. But why go on? You've seen it all before in one or another form: "Requiem for a Heavyweight", for instance.
It has some nice features though. The location shooting, all over wintertime New Jersey, couldn't be more evocative. Asbury Park looked from the outside exactly as it did fifty years ago. And the incongruity of the burly, battered Rourke in a plastic snood working behind the deli counter cracking wise with the customers. And Rourke staying up partying all night, then stumbling drunkenly out of some strange girl's apartment, staggering home, throwing himself fully clothed onto his bed, and sleeping until darkness falls. It was one of the few times I thought that I knew exactly how Rourke felt.
See it once, if you're curious. Rourke is unimpeachable. But it's not a good film.