The Wrestler / Robert D. Seigel, screenwriter of The Wrestler, used to hold down the top position as editor of The Onion, the satirical newspaper whose recent top story had the headline, “Obama Inauguration Speech Ruined By Incessant Jackhammering.” The people behind The Onion have led the nation in both print and Web readership, usually simply by taking the clichés of journalism and making a story that’s just absurd enough to ring true in our pop culture-obsessed society. When they say something to the effect of “Will Smith Saves World, Makes Cocky Yet Still Endearing Remark,” we smile knowingly. It’s funny, because it’s true.

With his new screenplay, Seigel is still relying on all those clichés of Hollywood, but this time, there’s nothing funny about them. It’s a sports movie with a story told a hundred times before—an aged professional who failed to capitalize on his prime years, finds himself playing in the minors, moonlighting as a day laborer, locked out of his dilapidated tiny trailer home, vying for the affection of a stripper with a heart of gold while trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

If it weren’t for the two leads, Mickey Rourke as the title character and Marisa Tomei as the aforementioned stripper, The Wrestler could sink into the territory of self-parody in the lines of Sylvester Stallone’s “other” sports movie Over the Top, which involved competitive arm-wrestling. But the performances of Rourke and Tomei, both recently nominated for Oscars in the Best Actor and Supporting Actress categories, keep things believable.

For a fictional film about a scripted sport, nothing has felt this genuine in a long time. Rourke, as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, mirrors his well-publicized real persona of talent squandered and documents his attempt to scrape his way not to the top, but out of the bottom. Tomei, who after an Oscar win, had moved slowly into obscurity brings a similar nuance to her performance, notable when she lets her gaze wander over the younger girls in her workplace after failing to find an interested customer. Both are involved in professions better suited to the young, but they find themselves with few alternatives.

The Wrestler opens with a collage of Robinson’s hey-day, when characters in video games were based on him and action figures were designed in his likeness, and then fast-forwards 20 years, with Robinson wheezing on a folding chair. His matches now unfold in community centers instead of arenas. He offers advice to the younger generation of beefed-up wrestlers, reminding them that it’s about the show, not the politics, and they gush in his presence backstage, just minutes before they have to slam a folding chair to his skull or take a staple gun to his back. He spends $500 more than he makes in a night on pharmaceuticals to help him keep up and fit. He knows he’s too old for this work, but he shows no sign of quitting.

When a promoter approaches him about conducting a 20-year anniversary battle with his arch-rival, he thinks it might be his golden ticket, but a heart attack cuts that dream short, and he realizes that he’s alone. He tries to sweet-talk Tomei into a date with all the subtly of a…well, of a guy who dons tights and hits people with folding chairs. “You look so pretty in the daytime,” he tells her. She accepts the comment without making one of her own. It’s this subtlety that’s most surprising coming from Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky who shelves his usual showy, frenetic camera style to let us observe close enough to see real pain and fear in his actors.

Then there is Robinson’s estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), the weakest point what should be an already hackneyed script. When she has her inevitable outburst of, “You were never there for me!” a scene that might otherwise make viewers groan at the schmaltzy, Lifetime Network sentimentality is instead successful because it is believable. The best scene, out of many great ones, comes as Robinson begins his new job working at a deli counter. He stops at the doorway, hearing the roar of fans long past in his head, only to emerge from the curtain to a throng of demanding and annoying customers. Ever the performer, Robinson wins over his audience. And so does Rourke. See it before the rush that’s sure to come after he picks up his well-deserved Oscar.

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