Comeback kids

Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”

Director Darren Aronofsky refused to make “The Wrestler” if he couldn’t cast Mickey Rourke as the central character—a washed-up professional wrestler torn between recapturing his past glory in the ring and rebuilding his estranged relationship with his daughter. The one-time ‘80s sex symbol of “9 ½ Weeks,” “Body Heat” and "The Pope of Greenwich Village” had quit acting altogether to become a professional boxer.  A pair of films for Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”) reminded Hollywood he was still around. But it’s “The Wrestler,” in which he plays a man attempting to reconcile the agonies of the present with the glories of the past, that powerfully fuses fiction and autobiography and just might lead to Oscar glory.