The Wrestler (15): Darren Aronofsky�s body slammer of a drama is notably shy about introducing its leading man. Five minutes, a relative ice age in movie terms, pass before the camera takes in Mickey Rourke�s face full-on.

The Wrestler (15)
Star rating: ****
Dir: Darren Aronofsky
With: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

Darren Aronofsky's body slammer of a drama is notably shy about introducing its leading man. Five minutes, a relative ice age in movie terms, pass before the camera takes in Mickey Rourke's face full-on. The gentle approach proves necessary. Even though you might know the score about Rourke - the hard living, the hard fighting and the rest - those ruined features still pack a punch. Where did that beautiful, keen-jawed man from Rumble Fish and Angel Heart go?

The looks aren't coming back, but the talent has returned with a vengeance. For once, believe the hype about Rourke's Golden Globe-winning performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Without him, The Wrestler would be just another 10 rounds with the usual sporting drama cliches. Been there, seen that, bought the Raging Bull and Rocky T-shirts. With Rourke, however, The Wrestler rises above the commonplace to become a remarkable, and remarkably moving, picture.

Rourke is not the only one doing a Lazarus act here. Aronofsky, whose own reputation dived after the deeply dippy fantasy drama that was The Fountain, is back on form too. Determined to tell this plain American tale straight, he opens with a look at the Ram's glory days. In the gonzo world of professional wrestling - a place where showbusiness meets low farce and high drama - he was the man to beat. It was the Ram who 20 years ago famously took on a wrestler by the name of The Ayatollah (played by one of many real-life wrestlers appearing in the film) and wiped his clock.

Cut to the present day and Randy is on his uppers. And his downers. And a medicine cabinet full of other drugs. With his spang-ly tights, peroxide-drenched hair and barbecued body, he looks like a beach bunny on steroids. He's so down on his luck he's living in a van, but he's still in the game, touring small halls in his home town of New Jersey, earning cash by the bout and getting respect from the younger grapplers coming up the ranks. When the fights are over, however, he wheels his suitcase back to the van, and to reality.

The nights when Randy is not fighting he heads for a local lap-dancing bar to meet a stripper, Cassidy, played by Marisa Tomei. The Oscar-winning star of My Cousin Vinnie is another actor who doesn't get nearly the amount of work her talent merits. Like Randy, the character of Cassidy, a single mum the wrong side of 40 doing what she needs to make ends meet, hardly required much invention on the part of writer Robert D Siegel. Again, never mind the cliche, feel the quality of the performance.

Tomei, like Rourke and the rest of the cast, is hardly flattered by Aronofsky's magnificently low down and dirty visual style. The indoor scenes look as if they've been shot through a used ashtray and the hand-held camera style gets up close and very personal with the actors' faces. It all adds to the faux documentary, ramshackle feel of the piece, the sense of a chaotic journey through lives stained by experience and disappointment. Everyone and everything looks in need of a power shower.

The Aronfsky of Pi and Requiem for a Dream shows he hasn't lost the ability to put an original visual spin on material. Instead of showing one fight straight from soup to nuts, he starts with the end of the bout, cuts back to its beginning, then slices and dices from the ring to the dressing room, where the Ram is having his wounds tended. For all the pantomime antics of wrestling, Aronofsky makes it plain these guys really do bleed. You don't have to look away from some of the more gruesome scenes, but it helps.

While the Ram can take a beating in the ring, it's real life that makes his head hurt. "I'm an old, broken down piece of meat," he pleads to his estranged daughter Stephanie as he tries for yet another reconciliation. Evan R Wood looks authentically wounded as the daddy's girl who loves and despairs of her father in equal measure. It's a fine performance from Wood, even if this tussle, like the rest, plays out along crashingly familiar lines.

Normally, such predictability would irritate. In The Wrestler, it suits the piece. The Ram's life has become a choreographed tragedy in which each protagonist has a strictly defined part to play. Randy, in the way of all sinners, will have his chance of redemption. He can impress the girl. He can make his daughter trust him again. But can he make good on those chances?

As in the Springsteen song that plays the film out - it too won a Golden Globe - there's an inescapable air of melancholy about Aronofsky's picture. Yet Rourke's astonishing performance ensures there is hope there too. Whatever Randy's chances of a comeback, Rourke is back in the game.