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Foxcatcher: Great Performances But Bleak and Long
By Sandra Olmsted
Director Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, which has already garnered prestigious accolates, mostly for acting, chronicles the true store of eccentric multimillionaire John du Pont’s (Steve Carell) descent into madness and murder.
Although better knows for comedy, Carell shows he has the acting chops for drama, and Miller gets credit directing the actor so well.
Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, in supporting roles, also deliver outstanding, nuanced performances under Miller’s direction. Miller, who is definitely an actors’ director, however, makes a few questionable choices, most notably regarding how long an audience can endure unrelenting bleakness, especially knowing how the story ends. Although the bleakness fits the story perfectly, 134 minutes of it allows time for nitpicking the little things, such as Carell’s makeup.
John du Pont has a lot of ideas for restoring America to its glory and the money to back them up. He also has a love-hate relationship with his disapproving mother (Vanessa Redgrave), who favors equestrian sports. John decides that the USA Wrestling Team can restore America’s glory and builds a world class wrestling facility on the family estate near Valley Forge. In need of wrestlers, he first recruits Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), the slowwitted, world-champion who lives in the shadow of his more charismatic brother, David (Mark Ruffalo), who has a gold medal Olympian to prove he’s the best but not the ego to flaunt it. While John trains Mark and showers him with better food and living accommodation than most Olympic athletes and hopefuls have, John also become obsessed with getting Dave to couch his Foxcatcher team. Then John’s mother dies without giving a nod of approval to her son’s wrestling because she thinks it’s “low” sport. Free of the controls his mother provided, John abuses drugs and slips into madness, dragging Mark along for the ride.
Despite being too long and too bleak, Foxcatcher has redeeming qualities besides the stellar performances. The film has a interesting kind of suspense, like a low-grade fever just waiting to spike to deadly levels, and Miller aptly ties that odd suspense to the exploration of John’s descent into madness. Foxcatcher, a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated R for some drug use and a scene of violence and opens in theaters Dec. 19.
