Review of Win Win (2011) by Demetris M — 17 Oct 2011

This may be the sleeper movie of the year. What is not to like? You have flawed characters walking on the razor that is redemption, a sports movie about underdogs, and a good cast that meshes it all together with fine direction by Thomas McCarthy.

Paul Giamatti (Mike) plays a sympathetic lawyer by day, wrestling coach by night, and husband to his wife and father to two girls. Mike canâ(TM)t make the bills as his practice and his water boiler are clanking like a â(TM)72 Pinto riding on three spare donut-wheels, rusty exhaust pipe, and no reverse on his transmission.

Mike coaches a group of wrestlers that would be good but they lack talent, fortitude, discipline, and the intangibles that equate to success. When Mike decides to cheat a dementia patient, Burt Young (Leo), of 1,500 dollars a month, claiming guardianship, but lying to Leo and all concerned (as we will see), he creates the setting for some soon to follow bad-events like night follows day.

Claiming to be Leoâ(TM)s guardian, Mike ignores the fact that the 1,500 dollars comes with the stipulation that he take care of Leo in Leoâ(TM)s home. But Mike ignores that and sends Leo to a care facility and all seems like it may go well for him until Leoâ(TM)s grandson Alex Shaffer (Kyle) comes to stay with Leo.

Kyle plays a teenage runaway with an almost insensible façade, stoic, but so cool that the kid seems like a young Sean Penn. His stoic, charismatic cool bordering on indifference matched with his skill as a wrestler soon has Mike thinking of glory.

Mike and his family adopt the boy and enroll him into the school and on the wrestling team. Soon Mikeâ(TM)s friend Bobby Cannavale (Terry) joins the fan-base making a quiet comedic expression that buffers the film from being another chop-drama.

Terry knows a wrestling boy-wonder when he sees one and suddenly his uneventful life gets a push. Meanwhile Kyle is pinning quality wrestlers almost in assembly-line fashion. Kyle has changed the team by bringing power, technique, and the underdogâ(TM)s slogan of if you feel like you are trapped under water, wonâ(TM)t you do anything to get yourself out, even a miracle.

And this is what he does as the fear of being pinned makes him the top wrestler and inspiration to his teammates who have resurgences of their own--- As Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

But with all good movies there still remains a moral to the drama and unfinished business is a cat scratching on your sliding glass door. Your sin will find you out. As Kyleâ(TM)s mother returns to claim her son, which she abandoned, and her share of her father Leoâ(TM)s estate plan, Mike starts to slip into save the season mode, dodging and planning a way out of his dishonesty.

Kyle soon struggles with his motherâ(TM)s fake-love, his grandfatherâ(TM)s dementia, and Mikeâ(TM)s sin and soon loses his edge. Win Win teaches us that shortcuts are rarely good, true-friendships are always good, repentance is a personal struggle that offers reconciliation (never too hard, never too easy), and just like the glory of the Promised Land, Moses did not get to see it.

Win Win brings it!