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Foxcatcher Movie Review

Foxcatcher is a 2014 biographical sports drama film directed by Bennett Miller and starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo. It’s a well acted, but lifeless movie.

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“You can’t buy Dave“

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When a wealthy sponsor, John E du Pont, invites Olympic wrestlers and estranged brothers, Mark and Dave, to join his team called Foxcatcher, their lives change irrevocably, eventually leading to murder. First and foremost, I have to complement the actors for their work here. Ruffalo and Carell were rightfully nominated for an Oscar for their terrific performances.

Tatum is also surprisingly good and very well cast. This just might be his best performance so far. Ruffalo is just as phenomenal as he always is and in this film he played easily the only sympathetic character of the bunch. The standout is obviously Carell, who has never delivered a better performance. He transformed not just through excellent make-up, but also in his voice, mannerisms and acting skills. This movie proved that he is better in the dramatic than in the comedic roles and he was superb throughout. I hope that Hollywood took notice for his future roles.

But other than the performances that were uniformly strong, I did not care for Foxcatcher at all. Bennett Miller made better movies before as his directing here was very lifeless. The movie’s slow pace rendered it impotent and free of any momentum whatsoever. Its long runtime also did not help matters, thus the film ended up being very tedious.

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What was particularly frustrating was the overbearingly dark, monotonous and suffocating tone that prevailed from beginning to end. Apparently, critics responded to this choice, but I personally found it insufferable. What’s even worse was the lack of any more meaningful characterization that was necessary in this story that should have been dialogue and character-driven. But the dialogue is too sparse and the characters underdeveloped, which resulted in a film that just goes through the motions. It was well made and certainly powerfully acted with a couple of very memorable moments, but it could have been so much better regardless.