I’m fairly certain this famous Pauline Kael quote is from her New Yorker review of Barry Levinson’s Diner (‘82), although it could’ve been sparked by a scene in Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (‘81) in which Rourke, initially glimpsed lip-synching to Bob Seger’s “Feel Like A Number”, played a soft-voiced, settled-down felon who’d begun to think twice about…everything.
Rourke seemed to be in a state of charmed, almost magical ascendancy back then. I could go on and on about what happened or didn’t happen, but the glow had begun to fade by the late ‘80s. His last truly alluring performance that decade was in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (‘87). Then came the early ’90s and boxing.
