Win Win

Finally...Paul Giamatti has come BACK...
to another quirky indie comedy

Grade: B +

Director: Tom McCarthy

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Alex Shaffer, Jeffrey Tambor, Bobby Cannavale, and Burt Young

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 46 min.

We first glimpse Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) in Win Win huffing through a morning job: exercise ordered by his doctor to combat chronic stress. Abby, Mike’s daughter, asks where Daddy is.

“He’s running,” answers his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan). “From what?” responds Abby, implying far more than she realizes.

As much acclaim as Tom McCarthy earns for his screenplays, his reputation as an actor’s director is just as deserved. In The Station Agent, McCarthy’s directorial debut, he helmed a terrific ensemble cast that included Patricia Clarkson, Michelle Williams, and Bobby Cannavale, and made a star out of Peter Dinklage. Richard Jenkins garnered an Oscar nomination in McCarthy’s sophomore effort, The Visitor.

McCarthy, already a veteran character actor at age 45, returns to his personal roots in Win Win, a winsome seriocomedy set (and partly filmed) in McCarthy’s hometown of New Providence, N.J. It is McCarthy’s most accessible yet subtly subversive film to date, one that manages to both celebrate the virtues of middle-class America while laying bare the unpleasant underbelly of human frailties.

Mike is a beleaguered small-town attorney with a law practice and office furnace both on the verge of breaking down. Mike’s me-time is spent moonlighting as a wrestling coach for New Providence High, although the team is suffering a losing streak as pronounced as their manager’s personal travails.

When the state moves to institutionalize Leo Poplar (Burt Young), Mike’s elderly, court-appointed client, Mike asks to the court to assign him to be the dementia sufferer’s guardian. Mike’s motives are far from altruistic, because instead of fulfilling his promise to help Leo live out his last days at home, Mike deposits both Leo into the nearest assisted living facility and the $1,500 monthly check Mike receives for being Leo’s guardian.

When Kyle (Alex Shaffer), Leo’s troubled teenage grandson, arrives on Leo’s doorstep looking for a place to live, Mike’s consternation over this potentially disrupting event turns into glee once Mike and his buddy Terry (Cannavale) discover that Kyle is a wrestling savant. Mike helps Kyle enroll in school so he can join the wrestling team. Kyle also moves in with Mike and Jackie, a Jersey girl who long ago embraced the responsibilities of domestic life but is still prone to occasionally flash her Bon Jovi ankle tattoo.

McCarthy’s script is smart sans the smart-aleckiness of many Sundance-era indie comedies. He does not saddle Mike with the traditional movie lawyer stereotypes – instead, he’s a regular working guy struggling to make ends meet who falters under life’s pressures and expectations.

That’s not to say Mike is a victim – indeed, Win Win suffers (almost fatally) from a bout of Rain Man syndrome. No matter the tidiness of McCarthy’s ending and Mike’s eventual road-to-Damascus moments, he begrudgingly makes time to even meet with Leo until learning of the windfall awaiting his guardian. He treats Kyle as a nuisance needing only a bus ticket out of town before discovering the boy’s proclivity for pinfalls.

Win Win survives these quibbles because of its cast and McCarthy’s handling of them. Giamatti gives his most genuine, organic performance since Sideways – he doesn’t play the role as much as he imbibes it. The director finds ways to exploit Ryan and Jeffrey Tambor, who plays Mike’s business partner and assistant coach, without allowing their distinctive personalities to overwhelm their scenes. Shaffer, himself a former N.J. high school wrestling standout, so successfully balances Kyle’s emotional tumult with charm and intellectual depth you’d scarcely believe the newcomer is making his feature film debut. And, Cannavale is the best he’s been since, well, The Station Agent.

Win Win has a set-up straight out of a Coen Bros. movie – one can only imagine the comeuppance Mike would in their sadistic hands. However, McCarthy treats both his characters and the audience with exceeding care and respect. The film is heartfelt but not sappy, sober but not cynical. To borrow the vernacular of the day, Win Win – and its talented writer-director – is winning.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://goo.gl/aLA4n