When "The Wrestler" first debuted and everyone started raving, I wasn't able to make much of the fabled comeback of Mickey Rourke. I hadn't - and still haven't - yet seen "9 1/2 Weeks" and I was playing with blocks and Barbies when he was a heartthrob.

But, now that the film's arrived in Williamsport, I can vouch that Mickey Version 2.0 does some really incredible work.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, "The Wrestler" is the story of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a middle-aged professional manhandler who discovers, via heart attack, that he's lived much too hard for far too long. Forced out of the ring after years of planting his life there, Randy attempts to find solace with a friendly stripper, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), and his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood).

But for a man like Randy, poor and alone, a ringside life isn't possible. Wrestling is so much a part of him that the only answer for the ailing athlete is for him to find his way back into the center of things.

But, "Rocky" "The Wrestler" is not. The film plays less like feel-good fare and more like an open wound. It's violent and intense, but also filled to the brim with soul. The wrestlers' antics are often horrifying - for the faint of heart, a warning: Staples are involved. But Aronofsky never glorifies these moments; instead, he displays them with the wrenchingly unsentimental intensity typical of his previous works.

At the same time, Aronofsky's latest film is markedly different in style and substance from his other work. All of the director's films make for raw, dynamic art, but unlike "Requiem for a Dream" or "The Fountain," "The Wrestler" is not particularly stylized. Rather, Aronofsky approaches his subject as a documentarian, and the director's cool detachment only makes his characters, and their story, feel more alive.

As a film, "The Wrestler" is much like its title character - raw, gritty, impassioned. Unprocessed, and low-budget in the best of ways. Randy is the sort of rough-and-tumble, hard-knock sweetheart that anyone would love to know, and likewise goes the film.

And as Randy, Rourke is so fearless, so natural, so gruffly vulnerable and yet so completely charming that it seems an utter crime that so many years in movies have passed without him at the center of them.

True, without Rourke's troubled history, one suspects that a performance of this nature would be otherwise impossible. Everything about Rourke informs Randy, and yet what the actor contributes to the screen is still very much a performance. This is not a character that just anyone with a tough life could have conjured.

Still, the parallels are inevitable: There's the conversation between Randy and Pam about how "the '90s sucked" and the scene where Randy plays an old Nintendo game featuring himself as a character while the neighborhood kid he's playing with fills him in on "Call of Duty 4." Times have changed.

Regardless, like "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Man on Wire," "The Wrestler" is moving, genuine and wholeheartedly alive. It's one of the best films of 2008, and the fact that it was able to show its face in town is a lovely winter surprise

As a side note, Rourke recently lost the Oscar for his performance here to Sean Penn for his turn in "Milk." It's worth noting that Rourke is only cheated here as much as Penn would have been had he lost. Both men are exceptional.

One man's work is raw, the other's is finely honed, but both have given showings that absolutely brim with humanity. Both are remarkable at channelling the essence of their characters, who were then captured on film by two very different visionaries sitting behind the camera.

It's the sort of movie magic we should all be grateful for, and I certainly am. Also, relieved. This week, I thought I was going to have to see the Jonas Brothers in 3-D!