Review of Foxcatcher (2014) by Jeff G — 03 Aug 2015

This movie was absolutely horrible. The pace was extremely slow. The dialog was uninteresting. The characters were dull and lacked interesting personalities. John Dupont, apparently was a loser child that grew up with only one friend.

As it turns out, that one friend was actually paid to be his friend. He enjoyed the sport of wrestling. Was he good at it? Did it make his life worth living? We don't know. The director shot one scene with John DuPont wrestling in what appears to be high school, but he is not shown winning or losing the match.

We do know that his John's mother does not approve of the sport and finds it to be low brow entertainment at best. She likes horses and Equestrian sports, which John doesn't care for. Even as adults, they can't seem to understand each other and get past their differences.

Tatum plays David, an Olympic hopeful wrestler. He is a depressed, quiet, and almost ape-like character that lacks passion in all aspects of his life including wrestling..which is odd for an Olympic caliber athlete.

For that reason, his character is rather hard to like and get behind. His brother, David, played by Mark Ruffalo, is by far the most like-able character in the movie. He has won a gold medal in the Olympic wrestling already, and has become a great wrestling trainer.

He joins the team in hopes of helping his brother follow in his foot steps. Of course, the opening scene shows that Mark has indeed won a gold medal, so the movie is really the story of how he won it.

The movie moves at snail pace, and is filled with meaningless and uninspiring dialog. The wresting training isn't inspiring, entertaining to watch, filled with an Olympic hopeful working his butt off to accomplish his goal, eating a very specific diet, hitting the weights and pushing his every limit, learning to new techniques, becoming stronger, faster, and better than he has ever been before.

No, that is a noticeable hole in the movie. There is no inspirational/ motivational speech given by John DuPont or anybody. That is also noticeably missing. If you don't like wrestling, this movie won't make you like it.

If you don't know the rules of wrestling, this movie won't help you understand it. This movie is like a politicians speech. It's long, pointless, and has no substance. In the end, the gold medal that was shown in the beginning of the movie isn't won.

..so there's a WTF moment. But that is soon followed by John DuPont shooting David in a another total WTF moment. The credits roll shortly after and left me wondering what this movie was supposed to be about.

I thought it was a wrestling movie, or maybe a coaching movie, or maybe a movie about perseverance. As it turns out, it's just a crap movie about a rich loser that is clearly mentally unstable, who wants to be a great coach, but isn't.

Wants to be a great wrestler, but isn't. Wants to be worthy of his last name, but isn't. I give the movie 2 stars instead of 1 because the acting was decent. Steve Carell shows he can do a serious film.

Mark Ruffalo also does a great job.