VENICE, (Italy) - MICKEY Rourke scored a knock-out blow on Friday in his title role as The Wrestler in director Darren Aronofsky's offering at the Venice film festival.

Darren Aronofsky's stunning offering casts Rourke, 51, as a has-been professional wrestler pitifully loath to throw in the towel.

The actor told a news conference that he drew from his real-life experience as a boxer in the early 1990s as well as regrets over an acting career that he says he 'threw away' 15 years ago.

The director of the critically acclaimed sci-fi thriller Pi (1998) explained: 'Under that armour there was this fragile eggshell. He's the most empathetic person I've ever met.'

Formidable with long blond hair that he has to dye to keep the grey out, Rourke's character, whose stage name is Ram, has been around so long that kids can buy action dolls and video games featuring his stunts.

After a heart attack reduces him to working at a supermarket deli counter, serving 'housewives begging for your meat' in the words of his boss, Ram throws caution to the wind and climbs into the ring for more abuse and adulation.

'He made it close to a documentary,' Rourke said of Aronofsky.

'These guys end up, when they're only in their 40s and 50s, in a rocking chair or a wheelchair. We didn't realise that until we did the research.'

Reflecting on his patchy career - though talk of a comeback began with his role as a hardened ex-con in the 2005 crime thriller Sin City - Rourke said: 'Feeling shameful is not a good feeling, and usually you're to blame for it.'

Meanwhile, a career Golden Lion was bestowed Friday on Italian director Ermanno Olmi, 77, whose 1978 neo-realist epic L'Albero degli Zoccoli (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) won the Golden Palm at Cannes and many other awards.

His The Legend of the Holy Drinker won a Golden Lion here in 1988, and he is also celebrated for his The Profession of Arms (2000).

The 65th edition of the world's oldest film competition came under harsh criticism for much of the first week.

In a typical comment, Times of London reviewer Wendy Ide wrote: 'Four days into the Venice film festival, and the programme feels as though it has been temporarily hijacked by hubris and bombast.'

She and others panned the much-anticipated thriller by Iranian-born French director Barbet Schroeder, Inju, the Beast in the Shadow, set in Japan, and a gangster movie set in Brazil, Plastic City by Hong Kong's Yu Lik-wai.

Another US film shown late in the 11-day festival and winning high marks was Rachel Getting Married by Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme.

The emotion-packed family drama stars Anne Hathaway as a recovering drug addict who shakes up her sister's wedding with an overdose of honesty about their dysfunctional family.

On Monday, another kind of American reality visited Venice - 'reality gambling' in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Vegas: Based on a True Story, directed by Iranian-American Amir Naderi, depicts a working-class family duped into believing that a gangsters' stash worth a million dollars is buried under their garden.

While US films have dominated the closing days of the festival, other standouts include Argentine-Italian director Marco Bechis' BirdWatchers, exposing the plight of Brazil's Guarani Indians in the face of the biofuels boom, and Teza by Ethiopia's Haile Gerima in which he revisits his homeland under the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Another potential winner is Russian director Aleksei German Jr's Paper Soldier, a recreation of the Soviet effort to put the first man in space in 1961 - Yuri Gagarin - which centres on the cosmonaut squad's chief doctor.

Two Japanese films are also in with a chance - Takeshi Kitano's whimsical Achilles and the Tortoise and Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated children's fantasy Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.

Ponyo remains the favourite among a jury of moviegoers weighing in for the festival newsletter Ciak. -- AFP