Mickey Rourke, Back in the Ring

Mickey Rourke is lapping up the attention these days, like a professional wrestler taking in the cheers of the crowd. Anthony Lane is the latest critic to pile on. Playing a pro wrestler on the downside, Rourke, Lane argues, recaptures a bit of what once made him great: "the way that he angled himself at the world, as if both sure of his place within it and, deeper down, afraid that it might still spit him out." As endures another brutal match, "he earns the caress of our pity...precisely because he never stoops to beg for it." Beware some sentimentality, but worth seeing.