Win Win

I’m a pretty big Paul Giamatti fan. Before I knew who he was it was still a treat whenever I recognized him in movies. Now I kind of seek out his stuff, and so far this has been the one that took the longest to see after I heard about it, because it’s such a small movie. What’s really cool about it is that it’s written and directed by Tom McCarthy, the guy who did The Station Agent and some of the new Game of Thrones series on HBO, which are both fantastic. He even had some involvement in the writing for Up, which is a fine movie too. To top it all off it has Jeffrey Tambor from Arrested Development and Amy Ryan from The Office. Good people in this thing.

Mike Flaherty is a rather down-on-his-luck family-man lawyer who is also a wrestling coach at the local high school. His luck starts changing when he finds out one of his elderly clients has a lot of money and needs a legal guardian to take care of him as he slips into dementia, which leads to Mike doing some shady things to get the money without doing too much actual work. Then his client’s estranged grandson comes into the picture and happens to be a great wrestler, unlike everyone on Mike’s team. Win win! Everything goes great for a while, but of course Mike’s misdeeds eventually come back to wreck his day.

It’s dramedy of sorts; very funny and also emotionally involving. Most of the characters are broken in some way, much like those in McCarthy’s other works. I really like movies like this where the characters are human and unsure of what they’re supposed to be doing. Kyle, the wrestler, is possibly the most human of all the characters because he’s not actually an actor; while his lines aren’t delivered with any sense of professionalism, it’s believable for his character and really works quite well. Mike’s slightly-better-off friend, played by Bobby Cannavale, plays a financially successful but familial failure of a man who just can’t seem to do anything without it seeming like sexual innuendo, and brings in most of the laughs while still being just about as broken as Mike. Amy Ryan, playing Mike’s wife, seems to have it a bit more together but is definitely ruled by her emotions.

One thing that was a bit weird but also kind of expected was the proliferation of product-placement. My friend and I counted at least five or six instances of it, sometimes more obvious than others; it was kind of funny how Wii Golf was shown a few times very quickly and mentioned in the dialog, with the delivery of the lines seeming to be almost begrudging of its inclusion, at least to my ears. I can understand why there was so much; it costs a lot to make a movie, even one as simple as this, and it still has a very independent feel.

It’s a very good movie. I’m not big on sports, but kind of like Crazy Heart’s use of country music, the wrestling in this film was easy to enjoy as it really had a lot to do with the story. Everything else was just really enjoyable because of the great character writing. You should go watch it if you get the chance.