Les Winners

As in Thomas McCarthy's first film, "The Station Agent", there is an air of loneliness to the characters in "Win Win" but also with an ability to be kind and with a whole lot of humour permeating throughout. Mike (Paul Giamatti) is approaching a mid-life crisis; the monotony of daily life and money troubles colliding. But this is a well written film and it doesn't look or feel like a mid-life crisis. Just as we get to know the characters exceedingly well (despite the short air time for some - Bobby Cannavale's Terry), a plot is introduced. Mike starts acting like a sleazy lawyer just to make some easy money, even though he's anything but a sleazy lawyer. Because he's a good guy, realities quickly catch up, and he starts taking responsibility for a troubled kid. Mostly trying to assuage his guilt of wrong-doing, but this kid happens to be a wrestling phenom and Mike is a struggling high school wrestling coach. This film could easily turn into an underdog sports story, but as I said before, this is a well written film and it doesn't look or feel like an underdog sports story. I found "Win Win" to be a great mix of character study, a mid-life crisis, and an underdog sports story all rolled into something that isn't any of the above. It's a light, funny, enjoyable slice of life that could provide a few lessons on morality but stops itself before it becomes condescending.

The story-line of Win Win brings difficult and realistic moral issues before us, which engage our interest and challenge our sympathies. But the film is not a ponderous work of moral theory, fortunately. Instead, it has many humorous moments which keep the tone quite light, even as the film raises some darker problems.

The first dilemma concerns the subterfuge that lawyer Mike Flaherty (Paul Giametti) employs to win the maintenance award for looking after his elderly client Leo who suffers from Alzheimers disease. The dilemma is not so much his (he needs the money too badly and he has a family to provide for), as ours - should we sympathise or not? Mike is a lawyer, yet he deceives the court and thus breaks the law. Yet, at the same time, Leo does not really lose out because the home that Mike puts him in is very comfortable. In a way, Mike's deceit is a win-win solution that solves Mike's financial problems and also provides proper care for Leo. But surely deceit cannot be condoned? Or can it? While we are still dealing with that issue, an entirely different one looms up and takes over the story. Leo's grand-son arrives, looking for his grand-father, Leo, who is now in the care home. Not only does this plot development add a lot of tension (because Mike's deceit is in danger of being exposed), it also adds further complications on the moral front. The first is, should Mike tell Kyle the truth, or is it better to try and help Kyle personally while leaving him in the dark? Should we really expect Mike to confess, when the result will be disastrous for so many people and achieve very little, apart from establishing the truth about Leo's transfer to the care home? Once again, we are just beginning to settle one problem when another arrives to add further complications, this time in the shape of Kyle's mother, Leo's daughter, who has never shown any interest in her father, but now shows a mercenary interest in his state of dependency.

I really enjoyed this film. There is a lightness in the telling of the story, which makes the whole experience a pleasure, but it is a story with some difficult issues to set before us, issues such as the care of the elderly and the rights of birth-parents over foster-parents, which give us food for thought. Above all, however, the film is very well acted and the characters are brought to life very effectively, persuading us of the reality of the issues which it raises, but also coaxing us to temper our judgment of our fellow human beings. The film reminds us that life is rarely as clear-cut as our stern guilty-or-innocent judgments would require.

In an effort to clear out our DVR in time for a gazillion hours of Summer Olympics coming up, my husband and I went on an Indie film bender and watched about 10 flicks that we had recorded. Out of all of them, only two really stood out -- Win Win and In a Better World, a small Danish film. I had resisted seeing Win Win in the theater, honestly, because it didn't look like something I'd like based on the trailer. I thought it was going to be one of those feel-good, high school sports movies with the troubled kid and the coach who turns everything around and everyone goes home happy. This had many more layers to it, as all of the other positive reviews posted here will attest to.

My big takeaway from this film is that I really trust Paul Giamatti's choices of roles, and until he proves otherwise, I will see him in anything he does. I am also amazed at the range of characters he can play, and his ability to make a huge difference in a film even if the part he plays doesn't seem that significant in terms of screen time. Win Win was truly a vehicle for him (as the film Barney's Version was a year or so ago), and he carries it with no problem. Great supporting performances here by Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale (who I currently love hating in Nurse Jackie), Jeffrey Tambor, and newcomer Alex Schaffer as the kid.

Actor-turned-director Tom McCarthy has put together a fine third feature in Win Win. All of his films tend to have compact stories that are small in scope but feature a very focused lens on the lives of their characters.

One might say that Win Win is perhaps his most conventional dramedy, as it features a normal suburban family with normal suburban problems. Paul Giamatti is "Mike Flaherty" an attorney with a small practice who's also a high school wrestling coach. He's not perfect, but he's doing the best he can. He and his wife "Jackie" (the always wonderful Amy Ryan) are busy raising two kids and leading their quiet life. But when Mike gives into temptation to become the guardian of one his elderly clients (for the $1,500 a month commission) things get to be a little more complicated. The client's grandson, a troubled 16-year-old kid named "Kyle" (Alex Shaffer) comes to stay with his grandfather while his mother goes through her drug treatment. Since his grandfather is living in a retirement home, Kyle ends up staying with Mike and Jackie, who feel compelled to help the kid out.

The film is funny and sweet and paints a really true-to-life portrait of its characters. No one is purely good or purely bad, they're all just human. They make mistakes, whether large or small, and they try to make up for them. In that way, the film will strike a nice honest chord with most of its audience.

Paul Giamatti is great in this, giving a much lower key performance than some of his previous works like American Splendor, Sideways, and even "John Adams." He falls into the suburban dad character very well and wears the character's skin rather nicely. Amy Ryan is always a joy to see on-screen, but I was a bit disappointed that her character was a little one-dimensional, depicting her primarily as a stay at home housewife and mother. Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor are fun to watch as well, but serve generally to provide comedic relief (which they do in abundance) and their characters aren't nearly as well painted as Mike or Kyle.

Alex Shaffer, in his very first role, holds his own among some heavyweight actors. I thought some of the emotional scenes were a bit rough for him, but if he decides to continue his acting, more experience will only help to mature his instincts and abilities. Now, outside those heavily emotional scenes, Shaffer is great. His sort of deadpan, monotone delivery works very well for the character.

Kudos go out to Thomas McCarthy's directorial style and talent. He's put together three solid films, all of them equally enjoyable and smart. With Win Win, he's proved he can move past the "loner" archetype of his previous films and move into something more family oriented and encompassing of more characters (although when I think about it The Station Agent had that type of familial quality to it in the friends that Finbar meets). Either way, McCarthy is batting 1.000 in my book and has yet to have a misstep.

When the film releases on March 18th, I'd highly recommend people go and check it out. It's a very sweet and very funny film that deserves the large audience it hopefully will get.

Win Win is a terrific multigenre sleeper. It's funny, even hilarious; it has mystery and action; and it features brilliant performances by the always-reliable Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan. It's also not a movie that wallows in treacly messages, and it's not a movie that uses sports as a crutch for "finding one's inner strength." In short, it's a wonderful, top-notch movie.

Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a small-time lawyer who's running low on cash. He moonlights as coach of the local high-school team, which is, to put it bluntly, terrible. In a burst of fiscal sanity, Mike offers to become legal guardian for Leo, one of his clients (played by the crusty Burt Young), who's just been declared legally incapacitated. Why? Because as his guardian, Mike gets $1500 a month. But since he wants to avoid the extra hassle of actually taking care of Leo, he puts him in a nice home. Seriously, it's a nice home, with nice people and a big flat-screen TV.

At this point, the movie wants us on Mike's side – sort of. He needs the cash, and he doesn't really want to tell his wife Jackie (Ryan) that they're running low, not with two young daughters to care for as well. Plus he's coach of a terrible team and is just swimming in stress. Swimming in it. So much so that while jogging to work off the stress, he suffers a panic attack.

Just when Mike thinks some of his problems have been solved, teenage Kyle (Alex Shaffer) walks into his life. Kyle, it turns out, his Leo's grandson, and they've never met. Kyle's been sent by his mom to visit Leo. At first, this complicates things – especially when Kyle seems awfully reluctant to go back home to Ohio – but then Mike's remaining big problem is solved. It turns out the kid is a gifted wrestler. Who'd have thought that? He looks scrawny, but in practices Kyle shows he has the mettle. And thus things are riding well for Mike.

But this would be a truly dull (if inspirational) movie if things continued to ride well. One thing we learn early on is that Mike intentionally misled the judge in Leo's case, giving the impression that he would be actively taking care of Leo. But things really get going when Kyle's druggie mom (Melanie Lynskey) shows up to bring her boy back – and to take over as Leo's guardian.

Too often, Giamatti has played real sad-sack characters, guys who just can't seem to catch a break, guys who suffer at the hands of fickle fate. Not so here. Mike isn't exactly a conniving mastermind, but he's not an idiot, either, and he deals with each situation with logic and reason, even as they spiral further out of his control. It's a typically masterful Giamatti performance, and for once he's not a total loser who's in over his head. He's even a half-decent coach who simply has a lackluster team to work with.

Giamatti's not alone, though. I really got a kick out of Amy Ryan's performance as his somewhat-exasperated spouse Jackie, who's not terribly fond of suddenly having a teenage boy around at first. A few years back, Ryan turned in an Oscar-nominated performance as a native Bostonian in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan had a thick, believable Boston accent then. Here, she's playing a New Jersey native, but at no point does she go overboard with the Jersey Shore dialect. That's what good actresses can do – they can dial it back when they have to and show a little nuance.

Win Win is not a stand-up-and-cheer movie, although the audience at the screening I attended applauded when it was over. It's not a crime drama, and it doesn't really have a lot of twists to its plot. What makes it work are all of the truly sincere, dead-on performances: by Giamatti, Ryan, Shaffer, Lynskey, Bobby Cannavale, and even Jeffrey Tambor as one of Mike's wrestling assistant coaches. Not a sour note in the bunch, everyone at the top of his or her game.

This might have fared well, critically, if it were released during awards season. It sort of reminded me of last year's Greenburg, starring Ben Stiller, only funnier and sweeter. Win Win is a charming, quiet movie that reminds us that, as the Grateful Dead once told us, once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.