Overcooked beefcake still has something
I admit it: I had a Mickey Rourke phase, during which I watched Rumble Fish, Diner, The Year of The Dragon (with John Lone as a spiffy ganglord), Angel Heart, The Pope of Greenwich Village, 9 1/2 Weeks and Barfly in one month. Diner and Barfly were terrific; as for the rest, Mickey Rourke made them work. Then he got weirder and weirder, which might’ve been alright if his movies didn’t get worse and worse. Rourke is getting excellent notices for his performance in The Wrestler. Think I’ll watch that one.Â
“For some years, Mickey Rourke was just about my favorite movie star. This was not an easy stance to take. The body of the man’s work was dismayingly thin, and the body ofgood work, from “Rumble Fish†onward, could be counted on the knuckles of one fist. As for the body of the man, it swelled from taut and slender to something so bulbous and spongiform that those of us who had thrilled to Boogie, his cocky romancer in “Diner,†could only wince and look away. Yet I insist: there was a time when Rourke demanded to be looked at, catching and holding your eye no less grippingly than the young De Niro.” The Wrestler reviewed in the New Yorker.
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December 10th, 2008 at 09:03
He had such good roles. For an actor that’s not too obviously good-looking, it was enough of an interest for me. Then the boxing phase came. No one even covered that? No profile in The New Yorker, no Hollywood “documentary”?
December 13th, 2008 at 20:54
You forgot Wild Orchid. Of course I watched that because of Carre Otis.
I think Mickey hit rock-bottom when he played the heavy in “Double Team” vs. Jean-Claude van Damme and Dennis Rodman. That movie was so gawd-awful it’s so ridiculously funny, a movie so bad with the unintentional comedy off-the-charts and the rest, well, blah.