The mystery of Mickey Rourke's career comes to a grungy apotheosis in The Wrestler the much-battered actor's triumphant return to the top rope. He plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson; a heavily scarred and medicated battler who's twenty years past his best moment in the ring. But he still schleps to every second-rate fight card he can get to; stringing out the paychecks (more likely a fistful of cash) and nursing what's left of his pride. His attempts to adjust to a more normal kind of life form the most absorbing sections in the movie; whether it's flirting with a stripper (Marisa Tomei is in good form; in every sense); establishing a bond with his understandably angry daughter (Evan Rachel Wood); or working behind the deli counter at a nondescript megastore. Rourke is commanding in the role; he obviously spent hours in the gym and the tanning salon; and his ease with the semi-documentary style adopted by director Darren Aronofsky allows him to naturalistically interact with the colorful real-life wrestlers who crowd the movie's ultra-believable locations. All of which helps distract from the film's overall adherence to ancient formula. You might find yourself waiting for the scene where the risk-taking Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) pulls the switch and reveals his true motives for pursuing this otherwise sentimental story; but there's no switch. The Wrestler is an old-fashioned hoke machine; given grit by an actor who doesn't seem to be so much performing the role of ravaged survivor as embodying it. --Robert Horton