This movie was in my social media orbit for a hot second, so I gave it a watch. What immediately arrested me is the opening scene, where Mikey (Peter Falk) confronts his old friend Nicky (John Cassavetes) in the throes of deep anxiety. Both are mobsters of a sort, and Nicky has screwed up badly enough that he's sick with worry. Sick enough that Mike is afraid his stomach ulcer is going to rupture and Nicky may bleed to death.

I grew up with bad anxiety problems. And the scene they have, of Nicky explaining how he let himself go because he's so afraid, and Mike wrestling him to the bed and begging him to take medicine for his stomach... it's not a direct correlation, but it's enough of a mirror to situations I went through during the worst of my anxiety that it shook me in a way I wasn't prepared for. So much so that I actually had to rewind the scene and watch it more than once because I was so knocked out of my own head that I missed some dialog.

The rest of the movie is interesting, but kind of up and down. It's one of those pictures where everything is laid out straight and it's up to you to feel what you want to feel. Drama isn't very accentuated with music or built up to have big heavy reveals. It's more about watching a sequence of events unfold on their own terms and peering in to a moment shared by two old friends that slowly reveal their contention as the night wears on.

Normally I don't like movies like this, and I especially don't like movies that end this way (and by that I mean movies that are largely "it is what it is" type stories), but I found myself captivated with Mikey and Nicky regardless. Strangely, there are other parts of this movie that remind me of other times in my life, other people I've met, friends I've known, and so on. And there was a strange amount of catharsis in that. It connected with me in a way a lot of movies don't.

For that, I think it'll always be something special to me.