Review of Foxcatcher (2014) by Calum B — 23 Feb 2015

Generally, I was extremely disappointed with this film after hearing such good reviews and because of that I was really looking forward to watching it. I had no idea what it was about because a friend told me it was more interesting to see when you know nothing of the story. Being a teenager I had never seen this story on the news and therefore had never heard of the incident and this means I had no inkling of what would happen.

I'll start by saying that I think the acting was phenomenal, especially Carell and Ruffalo. Carell was disturbingly creepy and basically very well acted, it was such a change from his usual comedic roles as well so it made it even more fascinating. I also thought Ruffalo was a really nice and likable character so it was a shame he was only present for half the film. Tatum was good to but not up to the others standards.

Unfortunately they were the only good aspects of the film. This film was very slow in my opinion and there were either shots that were too long or ones that were plain pointless. It was a 2 hour film yet apart from the murder, nothing really happened. What really made it fail (the build up to the murder) was the fact that in reality they could never find out this true motive for John committing the crime so they therefore couldn't say what it was in the film. This meant that there was no big revelation at the end of finding out what is specifically wrong with John du Pont, it was just a boring film with a confusing murder. I understand it was obvious that he was a very odd and disturbing character but it still gave no reason. In my opinion they should have done the film more like how it really happened. By this I mean have the first half of the film building up to the murder of Dave and setting the scene and the second half of the film about John's 2 days of solitude in his house negotiating with the police and then his sentence and diagnosis, this would make it faster as more happens and we would then be aware of some of the reason why he did it. If you don't know it's because he was a paranoid schizophrenic and thought Dave was going to kill him.

Overall, the acting was fantastic but the rest completely let it down which I think is a huge shame for the actors that worked so hard.