FOXCATCHER - Tuesday 3rd February 2015

Nominated for five Academy Awards this year including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay, I saw the next much talked about, highly publicised and critically acclaimed 'FOXCATCHER' earlier this week with a couple of movie buddies at the Cremorne Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace. And, I have to say, this too did not disappoint. Like many of this years Oscar contenders here we have another true story, and one from the relative recent past, that is at first a tale of hope and redemption that in time falls away to tragedy and loss. Crafted by Director Bennett Miller who last brought us the very solid 'Moneyball' with Brad Pitt and before that 'Capote' with Philip Seymour Hoffman - he is proving to be a Director with a keen eye for detail, a human interest story, keeping it real and an ability to do so with consistency.

Featuring some outstanding performances from its principle cast we are taken back to a time just after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games when Mark Schultz (a beefed up lunk of a man played brilliantly by Channing Tatum) and his brother Dave (less physical of the too but lithe on his feet and more strategic in his approach to his sport and played equally well by a bearded Mark Ruffalo) won Olympic Gold each for Wrestling. Now, just a couple of years later they scrabble together a living in backwater USA largely forgotten by the sporting community, but still wrestle locally and spar with each other daily to maintain their fitness and in preparation for upcoming tournaments.

Out of the blue Mark receives a call from John E. du Pont (an almost unrecognisable Steve Carrel playing it straight and with prosthetic nose, and quite brilliantly also) who is the heir to the du Pont family fortune. Du Pont lives on a grand family estate on Foxcatcher Farm in rural Pennsylvania with his ageing mother in a separate wing and a horde of staff to look after their every whim. Du Pont has a very keen interest in Wrestling (much to his mothers chagrin - Jean du Pont played by Vanessa Redgrave) and has built a training facility for the best of the best wrestlers to live and train on his farm, under the guise of 'Team Foxcatcher'. He sends for Mark who makes the all expense paid journey out to the farm to meet du Pont for the first time and hear his proposition. Needless to say du Pont has a money can-buy-me-anything approach and makes Mark an offer he can't refuse with salary, full board & lodging and a state of the art training facility, plus a chance to recapture Gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games with, or without, his brother.

As Mark trains hard for the upcoming World Championships at which he won Gold in Budapest in 1985 and then Gold again in Clermont Ferrand in 1987 his relationship with du Pont becomes more solidified and close - to the extent that du Pont introduces Mark to cocaine aboard a helicopter flight one night en route to a presentation dinner in the city, and then the alcohol flows - not such a good idea I am thinking for a world beating wrestling champion in training for the Olympics! But this is du Pont all over we come to realise - slightly unhinged and gradually becoming more so, emotionally bereft and mentally unpredictable all underpinned by a fractured childhood and clearly a disconnected upbringing . . . for all the family's wealth, power and influence.

In time the relationship starts to collapse and Mark's focus drifts increasingly further away from the Olympics as he drinks, does drugs and eats his way to someplace else with a sense of growing detachment. This is all brought on by du Pont's ever growing obsessive compulsive manipulative and erratic behaviour but with a firm eye on Team Foxcatcher's success at the approaching Olympics. And so brother Dave and his young family are 'persuaded' to move to Foxcatcher Farm to 'coach' Mark back to health and fitness which Mark can only muster half heartedly. Dave knows that something is not right, but brother Mark too is not the best at deep & meaningful conversations and is almost as emotionally vacant as du Pont and at times as equally unpredictable. But, the bond between the two brothers is very strong and Dave makes progress but, has to distance Mark and du Pont from each other for fear of a clash that would not serve any of them well.

Mark and Dave know which side their bread is buttered on - they are at Foxcatcher Farm because of the money paid to them both; for the free board, lodgings and trappings of that money-no-object country estate lifestyle; for the training facility; and for their last ditch attempt at Olympic Gold. Du Pont holds the purse strings and yearns his moment in the limelight as Coach, mentor, father figure and leader when the boys win Olympic Gold for Team Foxcatcher and the USA. But, will it all go according to plan? If you don't know the story and how it all ends for Mark, Dave, their family and du Pont then I won't spoil it for you here. Suffice to say, that it doesn't go quite according to plan and the end, when it comes, is as shocking as it is tragic.

This is a finely crafted film which like the other true life films this year in Oscar contention deserves its moment of recognition somewhere along the line, but, this year especially competition is very strong and whether it will be first among equals for Directing, Lead Acting or Support Acting remains to be seen. Nonetheless a strong story, fine performances, well realised and compelling viewing from beginning to end. So far it has garnered 13 award wins and 41 award nominations and cost US$24M to make.

  

-Steve, at Odeon Online-