It was a stroke of fortune if not of genius for filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to cast Mickey Rourke in the title role of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (né Robin Ramzinski), a Dodge Ram-driving, self-described “old broken-down piece of meat,” two decades past his prime, yet persisting in plying his trade at sparsely populated venues outside the glare of TV lights, dreaming of one last big payday at a twentieth-anniversary rematch with a Southern California car salesman formerly known as The Ayatollah. Rourke, monstrously bulked up since his stint of moonlighting as a professional prizefighter, has one of the most ravaged faces in the entire gallery of once beautiful leading men, somewhere between Jan-Michael Vincent and Francisco Rabal, and his noisy, labored breathing is excruciating. There is, however, an inherent sentimentality in the basic situation, and it’s not at all toughened through the by-the-numbers plotting around an attempted détente with his neglected lesbian daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), a clumsy courtship with an over-the-hill stripper (Marisa Tomei, carrying on in the before-it’s-too-late exhibitionistic mode of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, plus nipple rings and tattoos), a post-match heart attack, a bypass operation, an obvious and inevitable self-martyrdom. Aronofsky’s handheld camera follows Rourke around — often literally behind his back and over his shoulder, as in a Dardenne brothers art film — in ghoulish anticipation of a train wreck; follows him into the locker room to map out the matches with his fellow combatants (an amusing glimpse behind the scenes); follows him to the hair salon (for upkeep of his Eighties heavy-metal mop), to the tanning salon, to his drug dealer, to his degrading day job in the stock room of a grocery store. Best scene: reluctantly working behind the deli counter in direct contact with the customers, but really warming up to it. (Bad scene: flipping out behind the deli counter, specifically at the meat slicer.) The wrestling matches, natural dramatic climaxes, are crucibles for the actor and the character alike. Not to forget the spectator. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd