Win Win

Thomas McCarthy

The story: Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is a middle-aged family man struggling to keep it all together. His legal practice is barely surviving, he has bills to pay and the high school wrestling team he is coaching is stuck on a losing streak. Through some questionable manoeuvring, he begins to collect monthly cheques for looking after an older client, Leo (Burt Young). Then out of the blue, Leo’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) turns up.

A Paul Giamatti casting is cinematic shorthand for a very specific type of role: someone to whom life has not been quite kind, but while he might be down from a couple of hard knocks, he is certainly not out. The way he plays it with a quirky, comic edge, he has you rooting for his underdog persona.

He is fondly remembered for his turn as a wine-loving failed writer in Sideways (2004) and Win Win seems at first to offer a study of a familiar character. One of the pleasures of the film is that it does not quite go where you think it is headed.

The set-up points us towards a mid-life crisis for Mike but imperceptibly, and in a completely natural manner, the film shifts into a drama about wrestling.

Writer-director Thomas McCarthy had previously helmed the acclaimed dramas The Visitor (2008) and The Station Agent (2003), both about lonely men forging emotional connections. He is again in fine form here as he approaches the cliche-ridden sports film, well, sideways.

Win Win is the likeable, low-key, indie version of something like, say, The Blind Side (2009), where an unlikely athlete triumphs against the odds.

When Kyle first turns up in the movie as a troubled runaway kid, he appears to be a typical sullen movie teenager and the scrawny and tattooed boy’s unexpected blossoming on the wrestling mat is a delight to watch.

Newcomer Shaffer was himself a successful high-school wrestler and that probably adds to the authenticity of his portrayal.

More importantly, it is a performance without guile or artifice.

The supporting cast is strong as well, particularly Bobby Cannavale (from TV’s Third Watch and Will & Grace) and Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) as Mike’s bickering fellow coaches.

More plot turns lie in the movie: Kyle’s mother gets out of rehab and shows up, threatening to upset Mike’s win-win situation with regard to both the guardianship of her father and Kyle’s winning ways.

By that point, we have come to care about the fates of the various characters in McCarthy’s deeply humanist drama, which is really about whether one man will do the right thing.

(ST)