Directed By Tom McCarthy

Starring – Matt Damon, Abigail Breslin, Camille Cottin

The Plot – A father (Damon) travels from Oklahoma to France to help his estranged daughter (Breslin), who is in prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit.

Rated R for adult language

STILLWATER – Official Trailer [HD] – In Theaters July 30 – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Real people. The work of Damon and Breslin is nothing short of superb for the approaches they instill to their respective characters, which in turn allows each of them to disappear seamlessly into their roles. This is especially difficult to do for Damon, because his three decades at the forefront of mainstream cinema has solidified a familiarity to his appearance that is especially difficult to blend in with, but here works magnificently on a physical and emotional level for the quirks and nuances he consistently maintains throughout his investment. As Bill, Damon channels a southern drawl to balance the greying goatee and dad body that make up the defining features of his appearance, all the while unloading a naturalistic element to his speech patterns that feel enriched in humanity for the curse words he ends each of his sentences with in response. For Breslin, a lot of the transformation has to do with seeing her now acting as an adult as opposed to the child roles that make up a majority of her career, but equally invigorating is her unapologetic approach to the at times unlikeable character that makes her a wild card in the movie’s conflicting mystery. The chemistry between each of them supplants an intentional uneasiness that speaks volumes about their tortured pasts with one another, allowing the strengths of their body language to tell a bigger story where the dialogue at times omits from its candor.

– Thought-provoking. Like most of McCarthy’s films, the academy award winning director knows a thing or two about taking an intimately condemning story for a few, and fleshing it out for a universal embodiment that alludes to a bigger picture in connection. This is not only the biggest benefit that I took from my experience with “Stillwater”, but also one that allows him to pull back some compelling observations in the vantage point from where he views the world at this particular place in time within his respective filmography. Aside from this being a narrative about a father saving his daughter from wrongful imprisonment, there’s also sturdy conversations pertaining to various character pieces revolving around the bad decisions we make possibly being inherited. In this respect, it felt like “Stillwater” was touching new ground with its compelling narrative, especially considering much of the story revolves around these flawed people with the capabilities to reach as high as the sky, yet continuously find themselves defined by who they are and what they’ve done. It adds dimensions to the characterization that alludes to something bigger than each of them, solidified with proof in their movements that we outside of the box can interpret with concern, but them inside can never seem to elude when given the chance.

– Meaningful cinematography. Everything that cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi conjures up in these breathtaking visuals of the French metropolitan serves to benefit the beats of the story, but especially the vulnerability associated with Bill and his daughter that echoes the bleak outlook of their respective situations. Because this place feels so foreign and unnatural to anything that either of them have experienced from their Oklahoma Countryside origins, there’s a helplessness to the growing despair that helps maximize the tension in the primary conflict, all the while illustrating the uphill climb that Bill faces to clear his daughter’s name in a land with its own language and varying degrees of communication. On a surface level, the intoxication of the visuals themselves wholeheartedly elicit a rich vibrancy in cultural fabric, taking us everywhere from curbside coffee shops to claustrophobic soccer stadiums in an effort to grant geographic conscience to the persistence of the story, which in turn harvests everything that made Breslin’s Allison fall head over heels for as opposed to her small city origin.

– Language barrier. One side of production that I don’t get to give films credit for often enough, but one that “Stillwater” runs with accordingly is the consistency in its approach to the French language that it refuses to hinder for the accessibility of its audience. There are characters who speak both French and English throughout the engagement in dialogue at the forefront of these scenes, but the latter is only used when it involves Damon’s Bill, and the former making up a majority of the lines delivered throughout this French-based feature. This of course leads to no shortage of subtitles for our interpretation, but when authenticity is the name of the game for the experience, it’s refreshing to see a movie that demands we roll with the punches, gifting us an experience that fully immerses itself in the elements of the environment that fully convey Bill’s fish out of water perspective.

NEGATIVES

– Insulting disservice. Considering “Stillwater” is a story based off of the real life experiences of Amanda Knox, it’s a bit disheartening to learn how little of this tied into the factual basis for the story it shamefully undercuts, to which Knox has gone on record as condemning. Not only has Amanda’s name been removed from the integrity of the character, but Breslin’s Allison is a further diminishing point of interest the longer the movie persists, making her feel like a cameo-supporting role in a movie that should be almost entirely about her. On top of this, the endless barrage of plot holes and unanswered questions from within the movie itself paints a painfully ignorant emphasis to the finished product that doesn’t showcase Knox in the best of lights for a case that completely resolved her of any wrongdoing. It’s not quite as degrading as “The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson”, but its factual inaccuracies hurt the intrigue of the narrative tremendously, making “Stillwater” fail on the biggest aspect that it had in attaining a mainstream audience.

– Strangely convoluted. At 2 hours and 19 minutes, “Stillwater” is not only a painfully long movie full of pacing droughts, but one whose editing leaves far too much unnecessary exposition on the bone from which it pulls from. Part of the problem is definitely that there’s too many subplots and dynamics linked to Bill throughout the film, but much more of the problem points to the direction of McCarthy, who can’t stay firmly committed to the plot that was used to entice audiences with its conflict. This leads the movie’s inferior second half to deviate so strongly and strangely from the gears of the case turning emphatically during the first half’s procedural, making this feel like an entirely different movie than the one we were promised consistently before it. In my opinion, the editing is so bad that it could’ve removed forty-five minutes of unnecessary scenes and sequences, and it would’ve lost absolutely nothing. If anything, it would’ve made for a more cohesive narrative, and one that could’ve easily attained some measure of urgency for Allison’s imprisonment, which is presented as nothing more than a temporary hiccup instead of a tragic disposition of a woman fighting to clear her name.

– Tonally clumsy. With as many as three different tonal shifts throughout each of the respective acts, “Stillwater” quite often feels like three different films featuring the same characters, shoehorned together and presented as one cohesive project. It obviously fails at such intentions, and leads to many confusing elements of tone and structure that removes much of the intrigue that was promised in the manipulative marketing that presented this as Matt Damon in a Taken film. Instead, we get that promise for about the last forty minutes of the film’s direction, which evolves from a melodramatic character study in the first act, and a romantic comedy (You read that right) in the second. None of the transitions are anything but abrupt to the consistency of the way they’re transcribed, with each feeling as spontaneously registered as the drop of a hat, and each of them feeling like cinematically-infused life support to a real life story that is anything but any one of them.

– Underwhelming climax. To say that this movie’s resolution falls flat is the understatement of the year. So instead, I will just say that even though this movie does resolve its conflict accordingly, it’s the strange measures around this resolution that remove all of the momentum from its arrival. Before this aspect presents itself, it feels like every element of anticipation and dramatic flare is wiped from what transpires, cleaning up matters as neatly and tidy as two minutes of screen time can allow. After it materializes, we are left with a strange closing scene between father and daughter that is every bit poignant as it is contradicting to everything previously established in just the last scene. I could’ve settled for a predictably bland ending that took shape only moments after the resolution, but this film’s desire to keep matters running for another ten minutes not only further padded an already stuffy run time, but also concluded matters so inconsequentially that it practically stuffs the words “That’s it?” in the mouths of its audience to spew when everything fades to black.

My Grade: 5/10 or D