This year’s Oscar race for best actor will likely be a smackdown between Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn. Both are aging Hollywood bad boys. Penn never went away; Rourke did in a dramatic slide that included a stint in the boxing ring along with a lot of bad career choices. Rourke gave indications of how good he can be in 2002’s "Spun" and in "Sin City." Still, nothing hinted at the bravura lead performance he gives in "The Wrestler."

The smooth leading man with a knowing smirk has morphed into a sensitive hulk who’s traveled some hard miles, and every inch shows on his ravaged face. It’s a face that looks like a deflating football, while his voice sounds as if somebody sandpapered his vocal cords.

Rourke plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a pro wrestler on his last legs. Randy was a star in the 1980s, a ripped rock star of a wrestler with big hair and a tan that would shame George Hamilton.

Twenty years later, he’s playing high school gyms, unloading boxes at a supermarket and struggling to pay rent on his dilapidated trailer. He’s a decent guy at heart even though he deserted his daughter years back. He pals around with the trailer park kids and his fellow wrestlers. When Randy is offered a shot at a reunion match that took place 20 years before at Madison Square Garden, he jumps at the chance, even though it’s in a less exalted venue. Meanwhile, he’s courting Cassidy, a tough stripper played by Marisa Tomei. She keeps him at arm’s length when he’s not paying for lap dances, but Randy’s persistent.

Obviously, Randy’s age is a factor in his career, and the issue comes to a head before the big anniversary bout.

Director Darren Aronofsky and writer Robert Siegel take a social realism approach, something not in vogue these days. The gritty story is captured with hand-held cameras and shot with stark lighting in blue-collar locations. This approach allows Rourke to shine. His everyday movements illustrate the weariness and pain of his life. He’s still ripped and has heavy-metal hair, but he depends on painkillers and steroids to function. Part of Rourke’s terrific performance is off-setting this debilitation with the vitality he feels in the ring. The filmmakers show us the fakery of wrestling and the collusion of the opponents in fixing the matches. It’s theater, but it’s bone-jarring, physically demanding theater that often results in self-induced bloodletting.

Randy says he can’t be hurt in the ring, only out of it. His real opponents are loneliness, a sense of mortality and regret. Still, he manages to jeopardize a reconciliation with his daughter, well-played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Though he and Cassidy are involved in the fringes of show business, they’re opposites. Cassidy’s life is outside of the strip club: She’s a mother who looks at her false eroticism as a means to an end. She doesn’t use her job to define herself. Randy, on the other hand, see himself as crowd-rousing performer.

Though there’s plenty of opportunity for runaway sentimentality, the filmmakers keep their hands on the wheel. Of course, we need to feel sympathy for Randy for the movie to succeed. And we do. But emotional overload doesn’t intrude on this touching slice-of-life.