The movie Mickey Rourke never wanted anyone to see: “It’s so bad it can’t get out”
Of all the actors to have been hailed as the second coming of Marlon Brando over the years, Mickey Rourke is arguably the one who came closest to capturing the spirit of what made the influential icon such an indelible presence of cinema, just not in the right ways.
It may not be a net positive, but one of the things that made Brando unique was that when he wasn’t repeatedly proving himself as one of the all-time greats and the single most transformative performer in American cinema history, he was a pain in the arse who didn’t want to do the job he was paid to do.
Compare that to some of the others who’ve been labelled the ‘new Brando’ over the years. Robert De Niro? A consummate professional who was never in the headlines for the wrong reasons. Tom Hardy? He’s had his wayward moments, but they’re a thing of the past. Paul Newman? He hated the comparison and became a legend in his own right.
Then there’s Rourke. His style was effortless, natural, and magnetic, and he possessed a similar combination of dangerous intensity and rugged handsomeness to Brando. Another thing they had in common was that they were enormously difficult, with Rourke making many more enemies on the way out than he did on the way in, and that’s saying something.
His post-Wrestler comeback was fleeting, with the Academy Award nominee quickly falling back into a seemingly inescapable pit of straight-to-video genre films. Rourke never wanted to play politics, and even if he did, there’s enough evidence there to suggest he’d been terrible at it from the start.
The majority of films to have been made since The Wrestler have been shite, so it’s only natural that Rourke makes a point of telling everyone they’re shite. In his defence, he’s always accurate, especially when he hoped nobody would ever suffer the misfortune of sitting through the turgid crime thriller 13.
When Vulture asked about it, he laid his cards squarely on the table. What kind of film is 13? “A really bad movie.” Why did he make it? “For the money.” What does he think of the end result? “Terrible.” Should anyone make a point of seeing it? “No, it’s so bad it can’t get out.”
Unfortunately for Rourke, it did get out eventually. 13, which featured an incredibly random cast that also included Jason Statham, 50 Cent, Ray Winstone, Michael Shannon, Alexander Skarsgård, three-time Tony nominee Ben Gazzara, and former president of the New York chapter of the Hell’s Angels, Chuck Zito, was shot in the winter of 2008.
It would premiere in March 2010 but wouldn’t be rolled out until November 2011, at which point anyone brave enough could finally figure out exactly why Rourke wanted them to avoid it all costs.
