FOXCATCHER – The Review

High hopes were had but the award for biggest disappointment of 2014 goes to….FOXCATCHER. I like the trio of actors it stars, it’s based on a true crime that I once read a book about (Blood Money : The Du Pont Heir and the Murder of an Olympic Athlete by Carlton Smith – not the basis for the new film’s script) and it won Best Director at Cannes for Bennett Miller (CAPOTE and MONEYBALL), but I found FOXCATCHER a meandering bore lacking any tension. What should have been a compelling tale of money and madness is instead one long, suffocating 135 minutes.

FOXCATCHER is mostly told through the eyes of loner Mark Schulz (Channing Tatum), an Olympic wrestler who has lived in the shadow of his older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), an even more successful wrestler with a gorgeous wife (Sienna Miller) and kids. When we meet the Schulz boys in 1986, they’re training potential young wrestlers in Wisconsin. Mark is confronted by the employees of billionaire John Eleuthère du Pont (Steve Carell), who has somehow decided that the most patriotic way to leave his mark on the world is to open a deluxe clinic on the grounds of his family’s estate in rural Pennsylvania that he christens ‘Foxcatcher National Training Center’. There he can personally oversee, with Mark as a coach, the training of a new U.S. wrestling team to compete in the 1988 Olympics. He claims his motivation is to prove something about American exceptionalism, but it’s soon obvious he simply wants to escape the influence of his disapproving mother (Vanessa Redgrave). John du Pont would indeed leave his mark but in a way never anticipated by his family. After winning Mark over, he succeeds in bringing Dave and his family to the compound as well.  Du Pont not only enjoys wrestling, he likes birds, stamps (a proud philatelist), high-powered weapons and drugs, a combination of interests that eventually spells doom for one of the Schulz brothers.

There may be a decent 95-minute movie buried in the bloated FOXCATCHER but Miller lets scene after scene ramble on and on, an instance of a filmmaker overvaluing his material beyond all good sense. If you know where it’s all leading, it’s frustrating waiting for the story to develop. There is no momentum and the many training scenes at Foxcatcher are redundant. Tatum and Carell speak in hushed tones that underscore the film’s sluggish pace. What drives the eccentric du Pont is a mystery. He may simply enjoy watching sweaty young men flop around on the mat, but any gay angle is dialed way down here as are the depictions of du Pont’s drug use. A character left out of this drama (but discussed in the book I read) is du Pont’s dealer who kept supplying him with increasingly powerful and expensive product that likely affected his judgment. The movie offers as explanation Du Pont’s mother disapproving of wrestling and he of her horses, but every single encounter with du Pont is ominous, odd, or off-putting. This all may be true but it just comes across as creepy.

Steve Carell has Oscar buzz for his work in FOXCATCHER, but to me he’s more a sickly weirdo you’re forced to spend time with than a great movie character. Carrel whispers a slow monotone, and recites goofy lines I can picture Michael Scott saying like “Most of my friends call me Eagle or Golden Eagle” and “Horses are stupid!” I like the way his head is always bent back so he can gaze down his prosthetic beak on those bigger than he, sort of like Carell’s Gru character from DEPICABLE ME but without the charm (like du Pont, I can see Gru complaining about the tank he just bought!) While this may be a different Steve Carell than we’re used to, it’s hardly one of the top performances of the year. I think the best acting is from Channing Tatum who plays Mark as a slow-witted neanderthal easily seduced by attention and cocaine. It’s a tricky, physical role (what other A-lister could do a standing back flip?) with Mark going through the most changes and I liked the combative way the brothers bonded in the beginning by grappling each other  until Dave’s nose bleeds. Like Carell, Mark Ruffalo has scored an Golden Globe nod – his Dave is the most engaging character onscreen.

FOXCATCHER isn’t a fiasco, but it’s definitely a big letdown and my low rating is a reflection of expectation. Bennett Miller is capable of much better than this so let’s hope he gets back on track with his next film. FOXCATCHER has little to say and takes far too long to say it.

1 of 5 Stars