Win Win
As some of you may know, I love a film that has a certain quirk factor. Fox Searchlight films tend to cater specifically for my tastes, which is rather nice of them (Juno, Sideways, 500 Days of Summer), and I was not disappointed by Thomas McCarthy’s latest film, Win Win.
Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is a small-town New Jersey lawyer and wrestling coach struggling for business and success. With economic downturn stress we can probably all relate to, Mike’s secret money worries are eased when he discovers a loophole in the law that allows him to act as legal caretaker of a wealthy elderly client with a touch of dementia, and be paid a monthly sum. Not able to spare the time to actually take care of the old guy, Mike immediately checks Leo (Burt Young) into a retirement village and happily picks up the cheques, a plan that begins to fall apart when Leo’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer), a disaffected teen with the worst haircut EVER, shows up unannounced, looking for a place to stay.
It’s obvious that this dark-eyed, bleached-blonde teen has a checkered past, with a mother he despises in rehab, and nowhere to go but his grandfather’s. Seeing Kyle’s predicament and knowing what the “right thing to do” is, Mike takes Kyle in to his and Jackie’s (Amy Ryan) home. An accidental family is quickly born. Teenage boys with dead expressions and who barely talk can be a little scary to those who don’t know them, and we have to work out, at the same time as the on-screen family, whether Kyle is a kid to be trusted or not. You can understand why Jackie wants to lock him in the basement.
Despite being kicked around his whole life, Kyle has retained the ability to create meaningful connections. It also turns out, rather neatly, that he is a top-ranked wrestling champ, and once on Mike’s team, his presence brings the former losers success. I thought having wrestling as the sport of choice in this film was an inspired decision – baseball and football have been done to death; however, wrestling is one sport that I, for one, am not that familiar with. I was entertained by the scrawny-looking teenagers grappling with one another, bizarre movements that to the untrained eye look a bit uncontrolled and messy. For me this reflected the messiness of the situation Mike has landed himself in.
Mike quickly loses control of what seemed like a win-win situation in the beginning - with consequences advantageous and harmful to all involved. Mike’s deceit to both his wife and to Kyle comes to a head when Kyle’s mother shows up, demanding her son’s return and guardianship of Leo, of course for the accompanying monthly sum.
You could say the resolution was too tidy, the druggie-Mom not disheveled enough, Kyle’s wrestling prowess too convenient. But the skilled acting, the lack of caricatures as characters and a sharp script bring it all together into a film I found to be highly convincing. Lacking any of the shiny beautiful Hollywood actors, Win Win is a film in which you don’t feel you are watching actors; you feel you are watching real people. With bad hair.
It makes you think about where you would draw the line when it came to your own survival, even if it meant blurring the boundaries of good and bad. Mike has plausible motives for his actions, and because of his innate decency I veered more toward compassion than moralistic high-ground territory.
Catch Win Win at the Village Theatre to see which side of Mike wins out in the end.
Hannah Schenker
