8/10

Obsession to win comes with a cost even if the best advantages are at your fingertips. “Foxcatcher” tells the story of Olympic Gold Medal winning wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), who sees a way out from the shadow of his more celebrated wrestling brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) and a life of poverty when he is summoned by eccentric multi-millionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell) to move onto his estate and train for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Desperate to gain the respect of his disapproving mother, du Pont begins to fund a world-class athletic team and, in the process, lures Mark into dangerous habits, breaks his confidence and drives him into a self-destructive spiral. When reading about the backstory of this real life tragedy, i found that a lot of the biggest questions have been left unanswered, so i was quite interested in Director Bennett Miller’s (Moneyball) depiction of the events. What i witnessed, is a respectable debate for the best male performances of 2014. Steve Carell in particular is haunting as the quietly disturbed du Pont. With outstanding props work, the film manages to transform Carell before our very eyes as the rich entrepreneur. From contacts, to nose prosthetics, to a greying hair job, it shows that a lot of great detail went into Carell pulling off this character. The setting of the Foxcatcher farm as well as Carell tells the audience that something is kept secret about this too good to be true deal of a lifetime for Mark. Carell should no less be nominated for an Oscar when the ballots are handed in, and his dedication to John shows that he has a bright future in serious acting. Tatum is perhaps the biggest surprise of the film, as he commands a quiet storm that keeps building underneath his surface. Tatum was perfect casting, as his body build is the obvious for him being chosen for such a role. I can however tell you that it was his choreography inside and out of the wrestling ring that made the role perfect for him. Watching this film with a competitive wrestler, he told me that Tatum’s movements when he is walking is perfect even for any wrestler’s smallest nitpick. Tatum shows in this film that he has some legit acting underneath the macho romantic genre dominated films that he has been known for. His cauliflower ears tell the story of a character who has done nothing but wrestling for his whole life. Technical accolades belong to the set team for creating such an uneasy atmosphere at Foxcatcher farm. I mentioned earlier that something feels wrong here, and that is mostly evident due to a family owned property with lots of trophies, and an attitude to never settle for second place. The film’s lone problems are in a script that feels repetitive and stretched at times. I know Miller is basing his script off of real life events, but i felt too many of the scenes in the second act were unnecessary for a film that builds and builds and builds, and then doesn’t give a payoff until the final ten minutes. I appreciate that Miller invests a lot into his characters and doesn’t care about the running time (2 hours, 10 minutes), but the movie will start to drag for anyone waiting for the big climax. The only other problem came with the movie’s lack of time explanation. The film flash forwards a couple of times during Mark’s training for the Olympics, and we are never told how much time has passed. One scene in particular has Mark with longer blonde highlighted hair as opposed to the shaved buzz cut he started his Foxcatcher training with. With that kind of hair growth, we could expect that two months has passed, but in the next scene we see that only a couple weeks has passed based on how many days till the Olympics is on the chalkboard. Most biographical films have a great detail for the event dates, and “Foxcatcher” definitely could’ve used a better outlook on this. Overall, i would definitely recommend this film to everyone if you don’t mind a slowburn. The movie has a lot of big statements about class distinctions and the problems that money bring to it, and it’s in that commentary that “Foxcatcher” feels like something more. Very few movies in the last decade have written psychological distress like this one has. It’s masterfully crafted and hauntingly cold with a taste of tragedy for Shakespearian proportions.