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The Wrestler was the Surprise Film at the 2008 London Film Festival, and it's a stark contrast to director Darren Aronofsky's more highly stylised works like Requiem for a Dream (2000) and The Fountain (2006). If The Fountain represented a bold cinematic experiment by Aronofsky, The Wrestler is a much more traditional film. Like the recent Sylvester Stallone film Rocky Balboa (2006), this film is the story of a fighter who is past his prime but who wants to relive the glory days of his youth. Both films feature title characters who want another chance to prove to themselves and those around them that have still got what it takes to succeed as a fighter.

The Wrestler focuses on Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke), the aging fighter of the title and a man trying to dig himself out of a personal and professional slump. When not involved in wrestling matches that take their toll on his health, Randy visits a bar to see a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) or drifts through his trailer park life. When one particularly brutal wrestling match forces Randy to face the fact that he can't compete like he used to, he decides to quit wrestling and take on a day job. He also tries to develop a deeper relationship with Cassidy and re-establish contact his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), who he has not spoken to in years. But the lure of the wrestling ring remains, and it not only threatens to destroy the relationships that Randy has carefully built, and it may also endanger his life.

Rourke is the equivalent of a human punch bag in the film, enduring a lot of physical (often graphically violent) punishment and suffering psychological turmoil as he struggles to build a new life and regain some self-respect. But while Randy makes admirable attempts to redeem himself, he also has elements of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), in that he has self-destructive streak: he physically punishes himself in the ring and causes emotional pain to the people he loves. Both Tomei and Wood offer strong support to Rourke in the film, and while all three could be said to inhabit clichéd roles (goodhearted stripper, estranged daughter and washed-up fighter respectively), they all play their parts with conviction, and we sympathise and identify with them throughout.

Aronofsky rarely indulges in the sort of visual flourishes here that he used in a film like Requiem for a Dream. More often than not, we're simply observing Randy as he moves from place to place, often in a sustained take, where a handheld camera follows behind him as he walks around. There are occasional moments that put us in Randy's head (such as the cheering crowds that Randy imagines when he goes to work at a deli counter), which us experience his state of mind. On the whole though, Aronofsky and his collaborators adopt a realistic approach to the material, vividly bringing the larger than life world of wrestling to the screen, but never caricaturing a sport often seen as over the top. As well as being a moving story about a once great sporting personality, The Wrestler also makes us appreciate the time and effort given by the real fighters (and helps us understand the risk of fighting and the injuries the wrestlers sustain) when they step into the ring.