Critics are calling Mickey Rourke‘s titular performance in The Wrestler an Oscar front-runner—and easily his best in over twenty years. What this really means is that it’s been that long since the sleazy loudmouth made a movie that film critics could even blink at. In the gallery, we recommend ten films of wildly varying quality that will help the curious understand how a new Marlon Brando quickly became the (very) poor man’s Bruce Willis—and why everyone’s excited for his comeback.
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Angel Heart (1987): Rourke continued his adventures in classy sleaze with the sexcapades of 9 1/2 Weeks and this Alan southern gothic gross-out, which finds him humping Cosby kid Lisa Bonet and chasing clues for Robert DeNiro's long-nailed Louis Cypher ("Lou Cypher," geddit?). Only Rourke could describe Bonet's bloody voodoo ritual as "boogying with the cock-a-doodle."
