Foxcatcher
Director: Bennett Miller
Writer: E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman
Cast: Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Carell, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave
Part of: Surprise movie at the Viennale

Plot:
Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) are brothers and successful wrestlers, although Mark has always been in the older Dave’s shadow. But when the rich John du Pont (Steve Carell) approaches Mark to be the star of his Olympic wrestling team and in fact, put that team together, Mark sees an opportunity to finally get his own place in the spotlight. Instead, though, Dave joins them as the team’s coach and the increasingly erratic du Pont shifts his focus on Dave, leading to a completely unstable situation.

Foxcatcher has to be one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen. It felt like it happened it real time – and since the film covers a period of a few months, of not more than a year, that certainly isn’t a good thing. And ultimately, when you’ve sat through the entire ordeal, it leads you nowhere at all.

I was unaware of the story before seeing the film and since this was the surprise movie, I had no chance to read up on it. I usually like not knowing, but I suspect that in this case it actually didn’t help. [If you don’t know it either, there will be SPOILERS.] In any case, despite the fact that I thought John was completely insane right from the start, when he shoots Dave, I was completely shocked. And since that was the only moment in the film where I felt something other than boredom and discomfort at Steve Carell’s make-up, it was a pity that it happened about 5 minutes before the end of the film.

Speaking of Steve Carell’s make-up: it completely ruined Carell’s strong and aptly psychopathic performance for me. I just couldn’t get over how fake it looked and it was all I could think about every time he came on screen.

Surprisingly, Channing Tatum wasn’t half  bad and much better thann one would expect. But the only real light of the film was Mark Ruffalo’s performance as Dave. Generally, I wanted the film about Dave only, since he was the only character I cared for at all. Unfortunately, the script pays the least attention to him – to the extent that while it makes a point at first that Dave can’t be bought, we don’t even get to see how he changes his mind and lets himself be bought after all. He’s just suddenly there.

With no character to care for and an apparent aimlessness of the entire film, there was nothing to hold my interest and about 30 minutes in I started to wish for it to be over. That’s certainly not what I watch a movie for.

Summarizing: nah.