There is probably no more appropriate theater in San Francisco to see The Wrestler, a film about a decrepit, down at the heels professional wrestler and his missed connection to an aging stripper than at the Bridge, on Geary Avenue just west of Masonic. Mickey Rourke, in a part to match his persona, watches as his body gives way and reveals what adrenalin and male stupidity have kept away: he has no one. He tries to respond to the vulnerability and loss he feels, first with his favorite lap-dancer (Marisa Tomei), and then with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) in a cavernous, decrepit fun house along the Jersey Shore, and fails at both.

The Bridge is decrepit to match. It seems a hybrid between an art house and a house of porn. It is cold. It shows trailer after trailer of film to match the main feature – explosions, horrified faces, blood dripping down rainy windows. It is in a decrepit two blocks of Geary Avenue, next door to an empty Carpeteria, and Liberty Income Tax with a girl dressed up as a scarlet Statue of Liberty trying to wave in interest. An old black man layered up against the Richmond District, January cold until he’s as big as a black bear, is pushing a shopping cart filled with his worldly belongings. It is across the street from a two-bay self car wash, a Bedroom and Furniture Outlet — only the elderly Vietnamese proprietor showing any interest in the merchandise. The only likely lively place in eye shot is the Pig and Whistle, sometimes a cheerful Irish, neighborhood bar, tonight not, dim and forlorn, men bent over the bar with their britches revealing what they no longer notice. Inside The Bridge the audience is widely disbursed, as if wanting to be alone in their buttoned up coats, unobserved by others as they watch the parallel, theatrical worlds of professional American wrestling and professional American stripping, of raw injury and raw sex, both pumped by the same sound track.

Rourke is fabulous. In his world of strange theater, professional wrestling, where he has played so long, and longs to hold on to, he seems genuinely real to us as we watch. The wrestling ring is the play within the play. We know he is doubly acting. We see him deliberately cut his face as he moves to “Act II” of his evening drama, yet we believe we are looking at Mickey’s genuine face, worn, flailed, stitched, sagging. Every bad light that hits him, showing every crevice and boil, seems a real light. Tomei is just barely not as good. At first curvaceous, buttocky, beguiling, the sordid dream of those who are drawn to her stage, she ages as the play runs through, and has no better instincts or experience than Rourke, turning his awkward need away, when she too is in need. She is no longer the youngest in the club. She is turned down for a “special,” her g-string does not fill with fivers. She is a mom, with dreams of a condo miles away from her place of work and yet, no more than Rourke, can she make the break when it is offered. Oh, man is there a story to be told here, of the future arriving with all of its weight on those who’ve lived day to day on adrenaline, testosterone and youth.

Maryse Alberti’s camerawork fits the story. The garish colors of the strip club retain all their offending attraction. The cold streets of New Jersey, the bone chill of a trailer park all come through. Shot often in ambient light with gritty authenticity there are shoulder held shots tracking Randy the Ram through the crowds, through the worn out gyms where the play goes on, through the maze of the Acme super store where he picks up work, unloading trucks, and then, in some bravura scenes, as a deli clerk as the wrestling check falls lower. Sometimes the “verite” seems to go on for its own sake though, like long dance sequences in other films when all plot is suspended to enter the play and flow of dance and camera. There is one particularly long shot down stairway, around corner, through hallway to make the sort of silly point that the Ram’s former entry to the clamor of the wrestling crowd is now only to the Deli on weekend rush.

Yet for all that pulls us in, story, acting, camera work, somehow the parts do not become whole. I’m not sure why. In part it is way too predictable. This loser if not going to find his way out. He is going to mess up; he is going to return to where he can no longer go — because he has no where else to go. There is an alternative ending, the happy one, in which Tomei and Rourke recognize and make the connection, in which the last fight comes out triumphant and the Hollywood story of Man’s Will triumphs over all is told again. Only it doesn’t. The only redemption is the Ram’s professed belief in himself, that having recognized that he has failed in his human relations, and that his body is failing, he finds meaning in being who he is — a decrepit wrestler — that he will wrestle as long as his “family”, the fans, and the only family he has, will have him…and yet we can’t even be sure this isn’t his last failure, his last pretense, that he knows his ruined heart will not make it through the bout.

Ahramson’s wrestling genre makes a run at the great fight genre films of Eastwood and Scorsese and others, but it doesn’t get there. Perhaps the story itself, of a man running out of steam, doesn’t have enough steam to overcome the ruin. Perhaps the freneticness of the fight and strip scenes upset the rhythm of the slow deterioration and the slow telling of it.

I’m not sure what I would have done to fix it. More might have been made of the honor among thieves of the wrestling men — their respect for each other, their acceptance of each their role, their nonchalant working up each evening of the sequence of blows and falls, holds and escapes. The bizarre “staple gun” guy who calls Ram, “sir,” and wants to make sure he’s OK with the staples. “What’s it like?” “Oh it stings a little when it hits. You gotta pull em out after, but nothin big.” In a sense, this is the Ram’s family — and it flashes a few times, but more could have been made of it. Less could have been made of the utterly bizarre: the barbed wire in the back, the banging of a garbage-can encased villain with the prosthetic leg of an audience member. And oh yes, it’s bloody.

And for me, there was too much booty in the face, too much time staring dumbly at the buttocks, the crotch, the energetic, rote, pole dancing. I get distracted, wondering if these aging men of film making think they are still being edgy, taunting us to turn away and prove we aren’t sophisticated. OK, I’m not. The sadness of her situation is overwhelmed by the latent prurience of her story teller. He’s got two stories on his mind: the carnival of blood and booty, and the coming to grips with frailty and ending. A few less moments of Tomei’s aging back in supine come-on and a few more of her recognizing her care for Rourke, understanding she had screwed up in the fuck-you-get-out-of-here scene would have made me care a little more — about her, about him, and about the whole film.