Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a musclebound showman in Darren Aronofsky's film The Wrestler. (Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight)

For the first few minutes of The Wrestler, the title character appears faceless and fragmented, grunting and walking, wheezing and heaving his girth through late-night darkness. He’s crowned with long, blond, ratty Cinderella-hair so heavy it seems to weigh him down — or maybe his head is bowed in shame. What monster is this that can’t show its face?

Gone is the handsome, James Dean sultriness he displayed in Body Heat and Diner. But in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke's inherent tenderness is teased into something tragic and deeply affecting.

The gentle beast is revealed to be Randy “The Ram” Robinson (his real name is the more effeminate, ethnic Robin Ramzinski), a once-famous professional wrestler played by Mickey Rourke, looking like a photocopy of his former self taken by a broken machine. Remember the ’80s, when Rourke was within plucking distance of the fruit of superstardom, a Method-y brooder with rough-and-tumble sex appeal to spare? Years of professional bad-assedness, hobby boxing and really terrible plastic surgery have vanquished that guy.

Gone is the handsome, James Dean sultriness of Body Heat and Diner, but in the hands of a smart, stylish director, Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream), Rourke’s inherent tenderness — and intimate understanding of a fall from grace — is teased into something tragic and deeply affecting. The Wrestler is a simple, eloquent portrait of a loser, a sporty underdog picture in the go-guy vein of Rocky, but directed with furious energy. Aranofsky uses bright, naturalistic lighting and a jumpy, nudging camera to flush this dark little human story out of the corners.

Twenty years ago, Randy was a brand-name wrestler. Now he lives in a trailer park, but not even: he can’t find the money to pay the rent, so he’s been sleeping in his van. He still wrestles, but there’s little glamour to be found in the D-circuit and the occasional “legends” autograph session, where basement-dwelling nostalgia hounds offer up VHS tapes for signature. To earn extra cash, The Ram loads boxes at the local supermarket, silently enduring the sarcasm of his boss (Todd Barry), who answers his request for a weekend shift with, “Isn’t that when you sit on guys’ faces?”

Randy tries to resuscitate a relationship with his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), in The Wrestler. (Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight)

Randy’s attempts to plug into the world and spark to life again mostly fail. He tries to resuscitate a relationship with a long-abandoned daughter played by Evan Rachel Wood, a storyline that unfortunately sends the film careening into sentimentality. A forced emotional climax in an abandoned ballroom is pure cheese, and kohl-eyed Wood is far too furious, playing sulk at a pitch of 11.

Better handled is Randy’s infatuation with a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). Having pushed past 40, Chastity is also becoming invisible in her profession. The stripper and the wrestler share some kind of unarticulated bond — identities with expiry dates — but they can’t really turn it into intimacy. The closest they come is sharing a few truths over beers in a dark bar one afternoon, like agreeing that the hair band Ratt was awesome and Kurt Cobain ruined music.

The script is by Robert D. Siegel, a former writer for The Onion, and the Cobain exchange is typical of a murmured humour that constitutes the film’s sweet background music. The jokes are usually mined from bad ’80s pop-culture references — like the fact that Randy made his name in a Madison Square Garden match against a wrestler named “The Ayatollah,” or the pleasure The Ram takes in an ancient Nintendo game starring himself that is as sophisticatedly rendered as Ms. Pac Man.

But Siegel is also interested in pulling Randy the person away from the innate parody that is wrestling. This is a “sport” that almost no one takes seriously, but The Wrestler makes it look intensely athletic, even artful; there’s dignity in how each wrestler conducts himself with a showman’s concern for the audience’s pleasure. When Randy is in the supermarket, he’s a nobody, but in the dressing room, he’s a respected veteran, a comrade. “What are we going to do today?” the wrestlers ask each other before choreographing the match. “Staple gun?”

Aranofsky, who loves tricky chronology, moves backwards from the conclusion of one brawl to show us the ins and outs of a professional wrestling match, like how plate glass and little pieces of razor hidden in wrist tape create the blood that the fans thirst for. These men are gladiators who don’t die, though their inflated bodies look shredded. Yet only in the ring is Randy truly happy, which is why he’s always looking for the comeback, the way back to the sun.

Randy shares a moment with stripper Chastity (Marisa Tomei) in The Wrestler. (Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight)

Randy’s irrelevance, of course, matches Rourke’s. He’s been working steadily for decades, though hardly in anything worth seeking out (They Crawl?). The decent Sin City made use of the actor’s off-screen transformation, but in that living cartoon, under inches of makeup, Rourke’s acting was in competition with the film’s overpowering aesthetic.

In The Wrestler, Rourke digs deep and pulls out exactly the right tone of sleepy sadness. Randy is a hulk of a man, a wad of scar tissue with biceps like balloons, but he’s actually kind of a delicate creature. Lots of little throwaway details hint at softness and humanity, and the price of a life in the ring: the way he puts on old-lady reading glasses or places his hearing aid on the bedside table before he sleeps. Rourke is very sweet roughhousing with the kids in the trailer park; here’s a simple, childlike man who is more naturally happy than his circumstances will allow.

In a great scene, Randy gets a shift working the deli at the supermarket, tucking his reedy tresses under a hairnet. Once he comes to see his customers as an audience like any other, he’s scooping the macaroni salad and tossing the cold cuts with élan. At first, he’s thrilled to see he can win over the crowd, but when the moment falls apart, he’s like a wild animal out of his cage, rampaging through the back of the store, all fury and testosterone. It’s both uncomfortable and extremely moving to watch Mickey Rourke playing a man whose inner life doesn’t match his outer one. The actor nails it beautifully; he’s a beast bucking through the supermarket, lost in the ruined pastures of old age.

The Wrestler opens in Toronto and Montreal on Dec. 25, Vancouver on Jan. 9, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Halifax on Jan. 16 and the rest of Canada on Jan. 23.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.