Wrestle Mania

I am punch drunk over the glut of quality movies released in the waning days of December. With the exception of this recent spat of good work, it's been a completely forgettable year for cinema. Most of the quality work being done is being done for the small screen - "Mad Men," "30 Rock," and "Big Love" are far superior to most of the movies that I've plunked down 10 bucks to sit through. "The Wrestler," however, is one of the best American movies that I've seen this year.

Hailed as Mickey Rourke's comeback after 20 years in direct-to-video purgatory, Darren Aronofsky's portrait of Randy the Ram, a fading professional wrestler eking out a blue collar living in a grimy slice of New Jersey, is brutal, uncompromising, and unquestionably brilliant. Rourke is just as exciting and alive here as he was in "Diner" and "Body Heat." As many reviewers have noted, his personal struggles merge with the character's, lending them a greater resonance than they might have had were another actor to play the part. Heaven (and Hollywood's plastic surgeons) knows what happened to Rourke's once-beautiful mug, but his battered face is almost a facsimile of the Ram's trajectory in the movie - battered, but defiant, he's incapable of throwing in the towel.

Marisa Tomei, playing the stripper with a heart of gold, plumbs hidden depths in an underwritten role. Like the Ram, her exotic dancer is grappling with aging in a profession that demands youth. Though undeniably gorgeous, Tomei's face has begun to slack, her eyes look puffier, and her smokey voice (her strongest attribute as an actress) belies a lifetime of hurt and disappointment. In this and in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Tomei demonstrates that she has become a fine dramatic actress.

The best scene in the movie is a barroom encounter between Rourke and Tomei. In it, the two discuss their mutual love of '80's hair bands and their distaste for the '90's style angst that Kurt Cobain inaugurated.

"The '90's sucked," Tomei says at one point. To which Rourke quietly repeats, "90's sucked."

They might as well be discussing their own careers, both of which went wildly off the rails during that particular decade. This decade seems to be looking up.