Win Win

Written by Alex Sukhoy for Film Slate Magazine.

four slates out of five

“Win Win,” the new dramedy written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (“The Visitor,” “The Station Agent”) and starring award-winning thespian Paul Giamatti, has heart, brains and courage. The beautifully crafted story focuses on different men all going through personal storms, as each does whatever he can to reclaim a home of his own.

The film begins with a typical suburban family getting ready for the day. Mike (Giamatti), his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) and their two young kids all congregate in the kitchen. There’s both affection and humor from the get-go and the audience can easily recognize itself in this middle class setting. Mike, a lawyer, then leaves for work – his office is an old transformed house – that he shares with Stephen (Jeffrey Tambor), a CPA. The basement’s pipes rattle. The copier bill is late and Mike fixes the plumbing himself. Business is slow and the breadwinner doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

He shares some of his woes with best friend Terry (Bobby Cannavale) who is facing his own turmoil, dealing with the separation from his wife, who is having an affair with the repairman. The two men are jogging partners and during one of their runs Mike has an anxiety attack. This leads to the brainchild idea that he become warden of one of his only paying clients – a wealthy man named Leo who wants to live at home, but whom the state finds incapable of living on his own. Mike swears to the judge that he will allow Leo (Burt Young) to live with him – then drops him off at a senior living facility. In exchange for his guardianship duties, Mike now earns an extra $1500 a month.

The plan seems foolproof until Mike and Amy stop by Leo’s house to check on it and find a teenager sitting by the front door. Kyle (Alex Shaffer, making his debut) wants to live with Leo – his grandfather – and, instead, moves in with this new family. Shortly after, he surprises everyone with his wrestling skills. This turns beneficial for Mike, who coaches a losing team with Stephen. And, once Terry witnesses Kyle’s talents, he offers his coaching skills as well, because he’s “fun” and, mostly, because he needs a place to escape while dealing with his divorce.

As imagined, a camaraderie forms between all the men, including the other wrestlers, and with that cohesion, also, a codependency that feels so natural that the characters begin to forget what their lives were like before this boy arrived on the door step. With each new point of tension, a new resolve follows, opening the relationship between Mike and Jackie and, also, between everyone else woven into the same web.

The storyline could have easily found itself to be a predictable, sentimental and redundant piece of television fluff. However, because of the surprising dialogue and the transparent and superb performance of each actor, the movie rises into a caliber reserved for those memorable films that people will be re-watching and quoting for years. It’s just a matter of time before “man strength” finds itself into the vernacular.

Part “The Blind Side” and part “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Win Win” also defines an entirely new genre of movie: The guy flick. It’s that rare moment when men are allowed to express their feelings and, even more importantly, allowed to own up to those emotions in an arena they know all too well: sports. Sans guns or violence, superheroes or special affects, “Win Win” provides a release for a gender that hasn’t been kindly portrayed on the screen in decades: a man-child buffoon?

As The National lead singer Matt Beringer stated after talking about the haunting song his band wrote for the film, “Think You Can Wait,” the film’s themes are about “very normal and good people trying to do their best and the struggle to be good.” In this, “Win Win” is victorious.

DIRECTOR: Thomas McCarthy SCREENWRITERS: Thomas McCarthy, Joe Tiboni (story) PRODUCERS: Jacqueline Brogan, Lisa Maria Falcone, Michael London, Mary Jane Skalski CAST: Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor, Burt Young, Alex Shaffer MPAA RATING: R