WIN WIN (2011)

Genre: Drama
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor, Melanie Lynskey, Burt Young, Alex Shaffer
RunTime: 1 hr 46 mins
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG (Coarse Language)
Official Website: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/winwin

Opening Day: 21 July 2011

Synopsis: Tom McCarthy, acclaimed writer/ director of THE VISITOR and THE STATION AGENT, once again explores the depths and nuances of human relationships in his new film about the allegiances and bonds between unlikely characters. Disheartened attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach, stumbles across a star athlete through some questionable business dealings while trying to support his family. Just as it looks like he will get a double payday, the boy's mother shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything. McCarthy's deft touch with balancing drama and comedy, broken hearts and poignant humanity is at play in WIN WIN.

Movie Review:

While watching "Win Win," you get the sense that actor-turned-writer-director Thomas McCarthy truly knows and understands the intricacies of human desires. He takes on simple stories that exist on quotidian planes of suburban existence like in his quirky first film, "The Station Agent" where he takes a motley crew of characters and reveals an indelible longing to belong and be accepted. In his second film "The Visitor," a deeply felt character study, he expanded on these themes with frightfully honest force and posited Richard Jenkins as one of the more underrated actors of our time. In his latest feature, "Win Win," McCarthy continues a streak that has become arguably more assured and commercial.

His warm and thoughtful humanism now extends to a family, led by its spotlight on Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a struggling New Jersey lawyer with a plucky wife (Amy Ryan) and two daughters to feed and clothe. He moonlights as a high school football coach to make ends meet. He gets an opportunity to earn more money and live a fairly comfortable middle-class lifestyle when he is faced with a morally questionable case involving the the guardianship of a wealthy old client named Leo Poplar (Burt Young) who suffers from the preliminary stages of dementia. Despite his insistence to stay at home, Mike shuffles Leo off to a good nursing home, backtracking on his promise to Leo while pocketing the stipend allotted to him as the guardian. All seems well until Leo's grandson, Kyle (Alex Shaffer) a high-school student from Ohio runs away from home to join his grandfather in New Jersey. An easy enough fix until it's revealed that Kyle is also a wrestling wunderkind that energises Mike's team.

Giamatti finds that sweet spot -- as he tends to do -- between wretchedness and pity. He has that ability to draw you into the complexity of his character's predicament and follows through with a nuanced sense of purpose. Hanging in a constant state of flux, the interesting aspect of McCarthy's premise is how easily it can swing from a broad comedy and a moral exploration rooted in recession-era anxieties, where the decent thing to do is no longer certain to be the right option anymore.

Affectionate and quite likable but never hitting the emotional heights of his previous features, "Win Win" is McCarthy's sharpest but most manufactured script. It does not contain am easy naturalism and emotional veracity we have seen emerge in "The Visitor" but it does show a more structured, even-handed approach to its characters and theme, especially in its inquiries of domestic tribulations and all the cracks that begin showing. It all boils down to the ethical quandaries of our decisions each day and the people it affects but never loses touch of how essentially, we aspire to be good people trying to make the right choices in life for ourselves and the people we care about.

Movie Rating:

(Led by good performance, "Win Win" is a likeable and potent film with enough heart and soul to draw you in)

Review by Justin Deimen