Hollywood always does that, especially when it’s a Russian bad guy. In 2009, the actor told The Daily Mail that he had gone to “the wrong guy” for his surgery and that his plastic surgeon had left his features “a mess.He said: “I didn’t want to do a one-dimensional bad guy like you’d see in a comic book. His face was later called “appallingly disfigured”. Rourke’s boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery in order to mend his injuries. Indeed, Rourke himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: “(I) just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time.” In 1995, Rourke retired from boxing and returned to acting. He also suffered from short term memory loss…Boxing promoters said that Rourke was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. In 1991, Rourke decided that he “…had to go back to boxing” because he felt that he “… was self-destructing … (and) had no respect for (himself as) an actor.” Rourke was undefeated in eight fights, with six wins (four by knockout) and two draws…During his boxing career, Rourke suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone. I can’t sum up his boxing career and its aftermath any better than wikipedia.
In the face of an acting career on the downhill slide, he gave up his profession to become a professional boxer. Just a few years ago, the world had written off Rourke as washed up. I couldn’t be more thrilled for him, or for us as a viewing public. Much of this brilliance, of course, is attributable to directing and writing, but Rourke brings the character to life perfectly. His facial expressions, body language, and reactions to those around him reveal just enough about him to show the audience that he is a dangerous, vengeful man, but not so much that we can ever really be sure exactly what his ingenious mind is planning.Īll in all, Mickey Rourke is brilliant as Whiplash. We see him building his own arc reactor in an ill-equipped Soviet laboratory, sitting in a jail cell patiently awaiting his escape, breaking into “impenetrable” computer systems without trouble, and using the high-tech facilities of his employer as his own private testing ground for new weapons. Many times, he’s in entire scenes in which he speaks only one or two lines. Much of the genius of Whiplash in this film is that his part isn’t overwritten. Go ahead and click this image to get the full-sized poster. His super-villain getup is pretty impressive, too: When he reaches into his pocket for his reading glasses and begins using his huge, grimy fingers to operate ultra-high-tech computers, the complexities of the character’s past are revealed more fully than they could have been in thirty minutes of backstory. He’s a combination of wild long hair, extensive tattoos, laceless combat boots, and a mouth filled with the metal of low-quality dental work. What I couldn’t have foreseen was the brilliance with which Mickey Rourke, actor-turned-boxer-turned-actor, portrayed the movie’s villain, Whiplash. Those were my expectations, and the film, which I saw at a midnight showing last night, fulfilled my expectations completely. The story was sure to be inventive and exciting, the special effects were guaranteed to cause jaws to drop, and Tony Stark was certain to remain his billionaire playboy/bad-ass superhero/technical genius/self-indulgent party animal self.
After watching the first Iron Man movie a few years ago, I knew the high-price blockbuster sequel would blow my mind.