Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Tom McCarthy
Starring: Matt Damon, Abigail Breslin, Camille
Cottin, Lilou Siauvaud, Deanna Dunagan, William Nadylam
With movies as diverse as the Adam Sandler comedy The Cobbler, the Oscar winning
Spotlight
and last year's kiddie fare Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, it seemed as though director Tom McCarthy was settling into the
role of a gun-for-hire. His latest, Stillwater, suggests that McCarthy has left behind his journeyman phase and returned
to the theme that permeates his early work.
McCarthy's first few films -
The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win Win - are about troubled,
insular white men finding a new lease of life through a surrogate family.
Hell, the theme can even be found in Pixar's Up, for which he wrote the storyline. In Stillwater, McCarthy returns to this theme, though here it's the meat in a mediocre
legal drama cum thriller.
Matt Damon plays the latest of McCarthy's pent-up, taciturn, white
male leads. He's Bill Baker, an Oklahoma roughneck who has spent the past
five years working with his mother-in-law (Deanna Dunagan) to clear
his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) from a murder charge.
Convicted of killing her lesbian lover while studying in Marseille, Allison
now resides in a prison in the French city, and with no job prospects at
home, Bill relocates to France to be close to her.
When Allison's lawyer refuses to indulge some newly unearthed rumours of a
young man having boasted of his involvement in the crime, Bill takes it upon
himself to investigate the case. Bill doesn't speak a word of French
however, and so enlists the aid of stage actress Virginie (Camille Cottin). Virginie is the sort of woman who can't help bringing home strays, and
she seems attracted to the pain in Bill's eyes. Soon, Bill has moved into
her home and become something of a surrogate father to her young daughter
Maya (an excellent Lilou Siauvaud).
There's a stretch in the middle of Stillwater where it puts
aside its plot and settles into the sort of "found family" drama that
McCarthy initially established his reputation on. We just get to hang out
with Bill, Virginie and Maya as they all find something they need in one
another. It's similar to how Peter Weir hits pause on the thriller plotline
of Witness to become a drama about a man finding kinship in an
alien culture. Damon delivers one of his finest performances, and given his
current status as the internet's embarrassing uncle, he's perfectly cast in
the role of an ignorant American stomping through Marseille like Gene
Hackman in The French Connection II.
McCarthy's film might be seen as an allegory for America's relationship
with the world. Anyone who lives in a European city has likely interacted
with American tourists and knows the delicate balancing act of enjoying (and
if we're honest, envying) that curious naivete and decency Americans possess
while avoiding the subjects of politics and religion. Americans are
generally good-hearted people, but they consistently prop up governments
that will happily destroy entire regions of the world to keep the price of
oil or coffee beans down.
Damon's Bill feels American in a way few leading men in Hollywood movies
do. He's a decent, God-fearing man, but his single-mindedness concerning the
protection of his family is something to be wary of. At one point he appears
to entertain the notion of framing an innocent immigrant in order to free
his daughter, whose own innocence is left ambiguous (based on the Amanda
Knox case, I suspect American viewers will assume Allison's innocence from
the start, while the rest of us will keep an open mind).
When Stillwater returns to thriller territory in its final
act, it feels deflating. It's not a particularly novel or cleverly
structured thriller and it's quite derivative. It lifts not one but two
major plot points from the Argentine Oscar winner
The Secret in Their Eyes, and feels like a bit of a genre box-ticking exercise. But if you can
swallow the unconvincing slices of thriller bread, the meat of McCarthy's
latest parable of the kindness of strangers makes for a satisfying
sandwich.
Stillwater is on UK/ROI VOD now.
