The Wrestler is a movie that will make you itch. It is a scratchy, gritty, jumpy film about a past-his-prime professional wrestler and a forty-something year old mom who is making her living as a stripper. It appears to be a low-budget film. 90% of it is shot in the streets or in gymnasiums. I doubt if a single scene was filmed on a sound stage. Most of the movie, with the exception of the fight scenes, was shot with a hand-held, shoulder-mounted camera.

The movie depressed me. It made me cry openly. And it left me, for some reason or other, feeling GREAT about the human spirit.

I watch a lot of movies. All different genres, with the exception of “slasher” flicks (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc), and The Wrestler is the best movie that I have seen in years.

I am not a fan of professional wrestling in the least. I have never watched a match. Nor have I ever been inside a strip club or had a lap dance or paid for a prostitute. Those worlds are just completely foreign to me. Yet, watching Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei act out these two roles in the movie, I understood exactly where these characters were coming from, what they were going through, and what motivated them. The characters came to realistic life, and I ended up caring deeply for each of them. (To me, that is a sign of excellent acting, script writing and directing.)

Mickey Rourke gives the performance of his life as he assumes the role of Randy The Ram, a professional wrestler whose career is on the wane and whose personal life is in shambles. Mickey has always had the ability to take an unsavory character and show me his soft underside. Thus, I find myself relating to these people in ways that I never dreamed possible. The man is a true actor, in every sense of the word, much like Johnny Depp is to this generation. (Mickey's character in this film is tough enough to purposely cut himself with a razor blade for his art in one scene, and then, in another scene, become embarrassed when somebody finds out that his real name in not Randy, but Robin.)

I always enjoy watching Mickey Rourke work because, unlike some other famous actors, I NEVER see him working. He is so natural in front of the camera that, if I wasn’t an actor myself, I would think that what he does is easy.

Marisa Tomei, as the unwilling love interest of Randy, is also very convincing in a difficult role where nuances must be used to get her true feeling across. Her character justifies what she does for a living, being a stripper, by the fact that she has to support a twelve year old son whom she loves deeply. And the actress does this so well that I found myself thinking, What a GREAT mom she is, and I wish I knew her personally.

It would have been very easy for Tomei to play her character as the stereotypical ‘fallen woman with a heart of gold’. Instead, Marisa chose to portray her without any of that schmaltz. Her character is hard and crusty, and yet vulnerable and confused. She is afraid of feelings, and yet she loves deeply and never lets herself stray from her ultimate goal – a better life for herself and her son.

This is an extremely difficult role to play with any kind of verisimilitude, but the actress pulls it off brilliantly, pulling us into her character and, while we don’t really pity her, we appreciate what she has to go through.

Even though we have never been in the situations that these characters find themselves per se, in reality, we have ALL been in these situations. A good actor finds the Universal Human in every character and allows us to see ourselves in him or her. And that is what Mickey always does so well and Marisa did very well in this film. Bottom line - people are all the same.

As for the directing, editing and screenplay of this picture – not a second of the film is superfluous. It moves smoothly and rapidly from scene to scene without rushing or belaboring a point, and yet the sensitivity of the direction and the writing grabs you and leads you through the full range of human emotions – from fear to anger, from grief to love, from desperation to hope, from denial to total acceptance.

The movie does not preach. It does not judge, condemn or condone. It just shows you what it is, and let’s you draw your own conclusions. It is gritty without being sleazy. It is compassionate without being sentimental.

The fact that The Academy Awards completely ignored this film, with the exception of a Best Actor nomination for Mickey Rourke and a Best Actress nomination for Marisa Tomei, (choosing instead to lay all of its kudos on a dog like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), led me to the awakening that I can no longer trust the Academy to alert me to the really great flicks that are out there. As my friend Jon Adams recently said, “The Academy likes pretty films.”

The fact that this picture did not win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Director is completely unfathomable to me.

Mickey Rourke, for over twenty years now, has been taking my heart and stomping on it, leaving me in tears and with a huge of debt of gratitude to the man for showing me what it is to be human.

See this movie.