MovieChat Forums > The Rainmaker (1997) Discussion > Mickey Rourke as Bruiser Stone

Mickey Rourke as Bruiser Stone

posted 15 years ago by ecarle
1 reply | jump to latest

As I post this, Mickey Rourke is on the comeback trail and maybe gonna win and Oscar for "The Wrestler."

They say he's been "15 years in the wilderness," but I've seen him in some films during that time and he was great. In two of them -- "Sin City" and "The Rainmaker" -- he pretty much stole the movies out from under all-star ensemble casts.

Most people remember Mickey as Marv in "Sin City," but I also remember the charge that Mickey Rourke brought to the fairly routine 1997 film (by Francis Coppola, yet) of John Grisham's "The Rainmaker."

Matt Damon was a not-proven young star, so Coppola surrounded him with old pros.
Mickey Rourke entered early as "Bruiser Stone," the only lawyer in a Deep South town who would actually hire Damon's unproven young lawyer. You gotta figure a guy named Bruiser is a "different" kind of attorney, and Damon soon learns that Bruiser, who works from a strip mall with a shark tank on the premises, is an ambulance chaser extraordinaire who sees lawyering as no less commission-predatory than used car selling.

The thing about Rourke as Bruiser is that, even though he seems menacing and crooked, he seems to actually feel that young Damon is worth a chance, and he gives it to him when nobody else would.

Then he disapears from the movie...on the run from the Feds in the Bahamas or some such (and leaving behind Old Pro Danny DeVito as a non-lawyer sidekick to help Damon). You miss Bruiser Stone.

And then, almost miraculously late in the film, Bruiser reappears for a scene. He's in a Caribbean beach town, but he takes a call from Damon to...actually offer sound legal advice and citations on a key case! Who'da thunk it? Bruiser had a sharp legal brain, after all.

(Rourke's sudden reappearance in "The Rainmaker" to save the day with a legal citation is equalled by Rourke's sudden reappearance in "Sin City" in a later segment after Marv has left the movie, just sitting in a bar while Bruce Willis works the room. To see Marv again is to love him. And that grin. BTW: Bruce Willis has said that many saw him as a "pseudo-Mickey Rourke" in his early days as an 80's actor.)

Randy the Ram Robinson is a great character utilizing a lot of Mickey Rourke's late-breaking broken-down charisma.

But that charisma has always been there. Marv and Bruiser Stone are living proof.

[–] Mr_McLaurel 15 years ago

I just got finished with The Rainmaker and you're right - Rourke is great. But this movie is FULL of great performances. To me that makes it a little better than "routine." It's no Apocalypse Now, obviously, but it's good Hollywood entertainment. It even manages to get some political/social points in without seeming preachy. Funny now amidst this health care debate seeing staunch republican Jon Voight as a slimy rich lawyer deliver a line to the jury about finding for the plaintiff could result in "government controlled health care." I think it's a great accomplishment by Coppola - he makes this movie as if the audience has never seen a courtroom drama before. These aren't stock characters acting out genre tropes, but they seem like real people (most of the time). Hey, isn't that part of what makes The Godfather so great?

What's the Spanish for drunken bum?