A good movie

Thomas McCarthy, another actor turned director, seems to belong to the kind of directors who makes some movies which are very well reviewed but which don’t get much an audience, at least, that’s how I see it. This time, he made another indie drama starring the always dependable Paul Giamatti and even though it was pretty good, it was still not quite remarkable which is pretty much the same feeling I got from ‘The Visitor’. However, there is one thing I really enjoy in McCarthy’s work and it is the way he manages to create some really compelling characters. In this case, the main character is not a really a bad person, he is just a guy who happens to be a in a tight spot, gets an opportunity and makes a decision. Obviously, what he does is morally questionable but that’s how human beings work, we see an opportunity, we seize it and afterwards we convince us somehow that it was not so bad after all. To make things more interesting, they threw in a lost teenager and that was once again a very interesting character, maybe too nice to be true but still. Somehow, they decided to mix this family drama with a rather generic sport formula and while it was fairly entertaining, it was still really pedestrian and predictable. It didn’t help either that the sport in question was wrestling which must be one of the dullest sports I have ever seen. Still, in spite of its flaws, it remains a decent drama and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

7/10