Mickey Rourke: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked‏

4. Darrius Sayle - Stormbreaker (2006)

Remember when the Weinsteins tried to launch a franchise about a young James Bond-type? And Mickey Rourke played the bad guy? Well, honestly, we'd pretty much forgotten about it, and we think Rourke's been trying to do his best to block out the memories of appearing in Stormbreaker, supposedly the first in a series of Alex Rider films. To be fair, the big screen adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's novel wasn't the worst thing in the world - but it was pretty much equidistant from being the best. Pretty much destined to flopping in America from the off, the film didn't help things by loading itself with cameos by beloved Brits like Bill Nighy, Stephen Fry and Jimmy Carr, which is probably why they roped poor Rourke in. Well, alongside Alicia Silverstone, but she hardly counts. Rourke was supposed to be on an upswing, a scant year on from a career-best performance as Marv in Sin City, when he showed up as the main villain of Stormbreaker. American billionaire Darrius Sayle is planning on using computer software, distributed free to every school in the UK, as a way of delivering a deadly virus to the nation's school kids for...some evil reason. That never really gets explained. Neither does Rourke's frankly terrible performance that never quite gets to hammy Bond villain and stays firmly rooted in pantomime, except the person doing the scenery chewing doesn't seem aware of it.