Film Reviews

Win Win

• Rating:
• Director: Tom McCarthy
• Starring: Paul Giamatti
• Details: US / 106mins (15A).

From the writer-director of The Station Agent and The Visitor, Win Win is another amiable and charming drama-comedy. Tom McCarthy has a knack of getting under the skin of people and exploring what makes them tick. While he nails the characters here, the story could have done with a little finessing.
Giamatti plays Mike, a lawyer whose small practice is on the slide. When rich client Leo (Young) is deemed incapacitated and the court moves to place him in a home, Mike sees a chance of earning some extra dough. Becoming Leo's guardian, receiving $1,500 a month for the trouble, Mike lies to dementia sufferer Leo that the court has placed him in a home, while Mike still collects those monthly cheques for doing nothing. Things get complicated when Kyle (Shaffer), Leo's grandson, shows up: Kyle has run away from his drug-addicted mother and needs a place to crash. Mike puts him up and, when he learns that Kyle is a champion wrestler, goes about enrolling him in the school where he moonlights as a wrestling coach.
It sounds all a little convoluted and busy, but Win Win has a quiet, relaxed demeanour about it. It's a slow start, as writer-director McCarthy (The Visitor) pulls all the strands together that will pay off (a little too nicely, however) at the end. It takes a while for the quality of the story to appear as it creeps up on you from behind, but before you know it, you're immersed in what's happening on screen. That's down to the subtle story-telling, but also to the performances of the two leads.
If you need someone to play a middle-aged man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Paul Giamatti would be your first port of call. Giamatti can do this role in his sleep yet it is great to see the actor refuses to sleepwalk through these roles. Giamatti always brings 'something' to the role and 'somehow' still manages to differ one role from the other. Here he has to contend with a good man who does the wrong thing for the right reasons. He's fascinated by Kyle because Kyle is great at something and Mike has never been great at anything.
Newcomer Alex Shaffer is a delight as Kyle. Because it's his first film, it's tough to gauge if he's playing himself or the character but he nails the teenage mannerisms: sullen, shoulders hunched, one-word answers. It's when McCarthy asks him to up his game when the real drama kicks in that Shaffer is found a little wanting. Up until then he's one of the most believable teenage performances to find its way onto celluloid in recent memory. Shaffer never looks like he's acting.
Win Win may never hit a strong stride and is prone to the odd indie comedy quirk (Mike only smoke one cigarette and tosses the rest of the packet) but it's a likeable movie.

Review by Gavin Burke