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Darren Aronofsky's film The Wrestler, which netted Mickey Rourke a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture last night, is not the first movie to have that title. Back in 1974, here in Minneapolis, American Wrestling Association owner Verne Gagne produced his own movie, inspired by his own status us the AWA's undefeatable champion, starring himself and Ed Asner as a wrestling promoter. Despite the fact that this was a film about wrestling made by and starring wrestlers, it wasn't an enormously credible film: 1974's The Wrestler was scripted under a code called kayfabe, which discourages wrestlers from ever even hinting that there is anything about wrestling that is staged. Indeed, the plot of the film is borrowed from boxing movies and had the mob muscling in on Asner to influence the outcome of a match -- a ludicrous concern in the real world, where wrestlers meet before matches to discuss who will throw who where and when. The only allowance Gagne's film makes to the possibility the wrestling is fixed is a scene in which Asner responds to the charge of fakery by listing the names of wrestlers who have died in the ring, and every name he mentions is that of an actual wrestler who actually died in the ring.

Aronofsky's film dispenses with kayfabe. Instead, this new version of The Wrestler is fascinated by the artificial elements of professional wrestling. The film's protagonist, Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Rourke), a former star of the circuit in the 80s, spends as much time bleaching his mane of blond hair and tanning his ruined body as he does in the ring. He barely gets around to paying off debts and can't be bothered to buy a decent winter jacket, despite the fact that it is mid-winter in Elizabethtown , N.J., instead wearing a shredded down vest held together with duct tape. Nonetheless, when readying for a match, he will throw down nine hundred dollars on painkillers and steroids. The film offers a pretty bleak look at the finances of wrestling. To make end meet, Rourke unloads boxes at a grocery store and sells his autograph at VFW halls; there doesn't seem to be much more money in wrestling than in community theater, at least for the performer.

And Rourke's Ram Robinson is just that: a performer. In the ring, he milks the action, absorbing huge amount of abuse to seem as though he's on the verge of defeat before suddenly turning on his opponent -- and he likes to dispatch them by leaping onto them from the top of the ropes. The wrestlers in this movie call wrestling "the show," and they strive to put on a good one, and while the various elements of a match and its outcome may be fixed, the film makes it clear that the violence in the ring is often horrifically real. Rourke engages in an extended "hardcore" match against a goateed opponent that involves broken glass, razor wire, and, most unnervingly, a staple gun, and he emerges from it resembling a smashed plum. It takes at least as much time to get the staples out of him as it did to get them into it, and the stress of it causes his heart to fail.

Most of the film is set after this heart attack, when Rourke attempts to invent a life for himself as a retired wrestler. He fumblingly attempts a relationship with a stripper, played by MarisaTomei. It's easy to understand why screenwriter Robert D. Siegel and director Aronofsky were attracted to this character, as, with her stage name, tattoos, and crow's feet, she is likewise a performer looking at the end of her career; unfortunately, the filmmakers seem to embrace the symbolism of the character more than the character herself. Tomei plays the role with considerable grit, and Aronofsky is a good enough filmmaker that he makes her a credible character, but her relationship with Rourke is abbreviated. Outside of the strip club, we barely get to meet her, and so most of what we know about her is the chatty, flirty persona she puts on when she strips off her clothes.

Likewise, when Rourke attempts a reconciliation with his estranged daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, it last all of three scenes. These scenes are well-written and beautifully performed, but they happen so quickly that we barely have time to get emotionally invested in them before the characters burst into anguished weeping. For a film about a character who indulges in masochistic displays in the ring to whip his fans into a frenzy, the film rushes through the more complicated pains of Rourke's real life, and that's a pity.

It's particularly a shame because the film really does contain a terrific performance from Rourke. It's not just that he seems heartbroken throughout it -- Rourke made his early reputation playing soulful tough guys, and has never really stopped (director Robert Rodriguez has been using him to play exactly this sort of character for a few years now). But Rourke adds to this a lot of finely detailed physical bits: His Ram Robinson is about as nuanced a portrait of a ruined body as has ever been put on the screen. He wheezes constantly. He wears an ancient hearing aid, and constantly must ask people to repeat what they are saying; when they do, he unconsciously tilts his head toward them to catch what they are saying. An attempt at jogging, post-heart attack, leaves him winded and clutching his chest, and his eyes roll helplessly, terrified. These scenes convey a lot more about the character than the script's occasional extended monologues do. It's a gruelling portrait, and an answer to a question that the 1974 The Wrestler raised, but never answered: If wrestling is fixed, why have so many wrestlers died in the ring? Rourke is a ruined mess everywhere else, but, when he steps into the wrestling ring, he is at home, and it is perfectly believable that he might keep going back there, even when it might kill him.