Immortals

Generally concerned with juggling perfume ad hardbodies and bland hero questing, Immortals briefly springs to life whenever Mickey Rourke's King Hyperion stalks the frame. Hyperion wields the same kind of casual cruelty as Malcolm McDowell's Caligula. Subordinates are routinely mauled to pass the time, enemies bundled into bull shaped ovens to power abstract musical instruments. Enlist in Hyperion's cause and you can at least expect to have your face gashed and genitals obliterated. Hyperion's objective is simply misery. His presence choking all around him while he sits gnawing his way through an unceasing supply of stoney fruit. He's repulsive. Every level of Rourke's performance invites disgust. He fights like an animal, stabbing at eyes with thumbs, and hooking fingers deep into cheeks.

Rourke's performance lifts Tarsem Singh's film, a terrifying villain that lacks any sort of equal, moral opposite. In comparison, Henry Cavill's Theseus is a one-dimensional spear thruster, deeply fixated on equalising sneers targeted at his mother, with a surprising gift for pep-talks. Luke Evans's Zeus simply mopes around with the rest of his Versace pantheon, constrained by nonsensical cosmic laws that sometimes require him to murder his children. This is Greek myth by way of the action adventure assembly line. Gods hamstrung by noble notions of Judeo-Christian divinity, heroes passively locked into dull journeys. Only the baddies get to have any fun.

The Expendables

Sylvester Stallone speaks directly to lower brain functions. The director-actor understands that an action movie can have an outline rather than a plot; that how you dress this frame can more than compensate for a lack of any so-called higher artistic aspirations. Basically, The Expendables is your standard buddy black op. An elite pack of psychopaths must unlawfully invade a Latin American country suffering under a crackpot dictatorship and tear everything apart. For spice, the weak-piss Generalissimo is backed by ex-CIA heavies, with abilities that mirror our heroes, looking for somewhere tropical to get their coca crop grown. Continuing the body horror thread that the director hit upon in 2008's Rambo, Stallone's Expendables is dressed with traumatic ultra-violence. The film often most concerned with how easily a human body can be pulverised until it resembles nothing at all. 

Accordingly, each of the mission men is assigned a ruinous, comic book superpower: Stallone is a quick-hand pistolero; Jason Statham a shuriken sniper; Jet Li a wushu bushwhacker; Randy Couture is a tumbling MMA bone snapper. Terry Crews becomes an instant action icon thanks to a spot demoing the latest in combat shotgun technology from Military Police Systems Inc. Crews' performance as Hale Caesar plays like an embedded teaser trailer for a one-man army franchise that audiences are sure to demand. Unusually, nobody is marginalised. Everybody gets their moment and an admiring close-up. Stallone shoots deep-focus faces, daring you to stare at the canyons and crevices lived into these frowned up fizzogs. Stallone's eye is loving and sympathetic, particularly when regarding the brooding confusion of Dolph Lundgren's Gunner, a satellite crew member who gets a meta-textual encore. Sylvester Stallone, an actor's director? Who knew?

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 is about product. A considerable amount of the film's jeopardy revolves around dictating trends and the attempted poach of brand identity. Drama moves on trade show presentations, screamed at docile audiences. In Iron Man 2, Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark is the USP. He's configured his own hyper-armour and won't let anyone else play with it. Off-screen he's vapourised terror-cells and halted uprisings, instituting a privatised US centric world peace; Stark's non-profit, tax write-off is an enforced global stability not sanctioned by any recognised international authority. No-one can compete with Stark. He is alone. Director Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 muddles around with the madness of this super-idea, hitting on a fracturing hero and an army of bitter imitators. Stark's industrialised peace doesn't make these people happy, it makes them envious. 

In this sequel Stark must battle Mickey Rourke's Soviet era reflection and Sam Rockwell's tan-hand impressionist, both figures corrupt recalculations of Stark's good fortune. They amount to minor distractions in the end though, Iron Man 2's biggest enemy is Tony Stark himself, specifically his tendency to self-destruct. At a minimum, Stark's incredible new power is physically poisoning him. Lacking any appropriate equal to confide in, Stark retreats to microfilm of his father. Sensing his end, Stark goes about driving away those close to him, secretly equipping them to continue his strange, motorised ideals. Iron Man 2 is messy, frequently resembling a tangle of vaguely connected improv duels. Equally though, it is frequently about a bored and stupored superman. Stark's is a personality founded on drives, struggling for a challenge. If this world is conquered, then what is next? A post-credits clip hints at a cosmic stage for the eventual Avengers tie-in. There's that product again.

More Wrestler

Took in The Wrestler again last night, this time with a much bigger audience. Like all truly great movies, it seemed shorter, slighter, quicker. It barely began, and it was away again. Rather than write another rambling love letter, here's a couple of rambling love points I completely failed to make in my previous review. No doubt it'll end up longer than the review it supplements. A touch more specific this time, so if you haven't had the pleasure yet, you might not want to read on.

1. Unashamed male tenderness.

Professional Wrestling is a soap opera. The choreographed dance men can watch and enjoy without ever feeling like their sexuality is being called into question. If you're a fan, this, despite the oily tanned muscles on show, is all butch. If you're a fan. Otherwise: marginalised and largely centralised since it's 80s heyday, the theatre clings desperately to the invented idea of 'sports entertainment'. It's unloved. It's critically derelict. It's fake. It's for dolts and thugs. It's gay even.

The Wrestler portrays these slighted lunks as a generous family of of back-patters, all eager to dole out praise for their fellow performers. Ram is treated like a God by the kids. They call him sir, and fawn when he compliments them. They love him. His steroid dealer giggles like a child when Ram inspects his muscles. The titty bar bouncer Big Chris can barely get a crossed word out when Ram starts acting the prick.

In-ring nemesis Ayatollah is concerned when Ram visibly starts to flag. He lies down and begs Ram to end the match. After hearing some bemused indifference from a group of women exiting the cinema last night, it's hard not to see The Wrestler as a purely male emotional experience. I'm not even sure why. Is it deep seated gender identity? Fulfilment in working to provide? Being unable to adequately express your feelings? At it's core, Wrestler is about a failure pulling himself together long enough to shine very very brightly. It's about doing one thing exceptionally well, while everything else crumbles.

2. Music.

It's the moment that Ram's rambling guitar theme finally stops it's confused circling, transforming into a triumphant, throbbing rock and roll pound. It's Springsteen's close-out poem to earnest losers - a fee-less favour to his friend Mickey Rourke. It's providing context for a Guns N' Roses hit I never cared even a little bit for: clod-rock melodrama united to wonderful, trembling image. In The Wrestler, Sweet Child o' Mine sounds like a transcendental angel choir; an unspeakably mournful, hair prickling melody.

The Wrestler

Recalling the directionless plight of Jake Roberts from Barry Blaustein's 1999 grapple confessional Beyond the Mat; Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler strikes a similar observational nerve, passively tailing Mickey Rourke's washed-up hair-hero Randy the Ram as he puzzles through the dregs of his pro wrestling career. Twenty years past his prime, his best days rendered as lurid NES-bit distractions whilst indulgent neighbourhood kids prattle on about Call of Duty. He has a daughter that won't speak to him, a week-day job he hates, and the closest thing to an adult relationship is infrequently pestering a slightly past-her-prime stripper, played by the luminous Marisa Tomei. Finding himself in hospital after a brutal hardcore match, Ram attempts to put his life back together. As an outline: ho-hum. Thankfully, Mickey Rourke (and indeed every else involved with the production) is (are) incredible. 

Ram's return from the wilderness to a nostalgia-baiting confrontation with a newly relevant heel is easily read in the context of Rourke's tossed-out acting career. A shining light in the 1980s, Rourke lost himself in booze and amateur boxing, destroying the matinee star looks he was (partially) cherished for. Providing able support in a couple of recent Tony Scott flicks, Rourke was back front-and-centre playing 'Conan in a trench coat' Marv in 2005's Sin City. Not everyone was convinced though. It didn't help that Rourke was somewhat short-changed with the Marv role, the more fearful, slef-reflective second dimension of that comic book character jettisoned by the big screen adaptation for one-note chuckles. Still, who can argue now? Rourke's life is the role, the years of success and self-destruction informing every inch of this Robin Ramzinki. Rourke's earnest, dignified performance perfectly compliments Aronofsky's unfussy, documentary styled direction. The Wrestler is not some career-crash geek-show, it's a Springsteen sketch of the private lives of macho dreamers. It didn't quite work out for them.