Les Winners

Like enduring friendships, "Win Win" grows and deepens as it unfolds. The characters become more dear, the laughs get louder and the plot thickens.

Writer, director Thomas McCarthy (who also wrote and directed one of my all time favorite movies, "The Station Agent") has created a group of characters as strange and wonderful as real people, but with better lines. Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan are perfect. New-comer Alex Shaffer as a troubled teen wrestler creates a whole new kind of cool. Bobby Cannavale (also from "The Station Agent) sparkles in every scene.

If you want to see writing, directing and acting at it's best go see "Win Win." You'll win too.

The story-line of Win Win brings difficult and realistic moral issues before us, which engage our interest and challenge our sympathies. But the film is not a ponderous work of moral theory, fortunately. Instead, it has many humorous moments which keep the tone quite light, even as the film raises some darker problems.

The first dilemma concerns the subterfuge that lawyer Mike Flaherty (Paul Giametti) employs to win the maintenance award for looking after his elderly client Leo who suffers from Alzheimers disease. The dilemma is not so much his (he needs the money too badly and he has a family to provide for), as ours - should we sympathise or not? Mike is a lawyer, yet he deceives the court and thus breaks the law. Yet, at the same time, Leo does not really lose out because the home that Mike puts him in is very comfortable. In a way, Mike's deceit is a win-win solution that solves Mike's financial problems and also provides proper care for Leo. But surely deceit cannot be condoned? Or can it? While we are still dealing with that issue, an entirely different one looms up and takes over the story. Leo's grand-son arrives, looking for his grand-father, Leo, who is now in the care home. Not only does this plot development add a lot of tension (because Mike's deceit is in danger of being exposed), it also adds further complications on the moral front. The first is, should Mike tell Kyle the truth, or is it better to try and help Kyle personally while leaving him in the dark? Should we really expect Mike to confess, when the result will be disastrous for so many people and achieve very little, apart from establishing the truth about Leo's transfer to the care home? Once again, we are just beginning to settle one problem when another arrives to add further complications, this time in the shape of Kyle's mother, Leo's daughter, who has never shown any interest in her father, but now shows a mercenary interest in his state of dependency.

I really enjoyed this film. There is a lightness in the telling of the story, which makes the whole experience a pleasure, but it is a story with some difficult issues to set before us, issues such as the care of the elderly and the rights of birth-parents over foster-parents, which give us food for thought. Above all, however, the film is very well acted and the characters are brought to life very effectively, persuading us of the reality of the issues which it raises, but also coaxing us to temper our judgment of our fellow human beings. The film reminds us that life is rarely as clear-cut as our stern guilty-or-innocent judgments would require.

Win Win is a charming delightful film about an ordinary family dealing with the struggles of everyday life. Writer/Director Tom McCarthy should be commended for his excellent work. Paul Giamatti – a true everyman actor – delivers a wonderful performance as a lawyer and wrestling coach struggling with the challenges of family and money in New Jersey. In the process of taking guardianship for an elderly client Giamatti's character, Mike Flaherty, becomes enmeshed in the old man's family when the old man's grandson shows up literally on his front doorstep. The teenager turns out to be an incredible wrestler, which is a great asset to Mike's awful wrestling team. And then things begin to get complicated. Giamatti specializes in bringing forth flawed characters that are delightfully human. This is a funny, sweet film that combines comedy and drama. Win Win also reminds us that family goes well beyond blood relatives; family is the constantly evolving circle of people that we love and care about. I literally walked out of theater just feeling much better than when I walked in. That has to be one of the best ways to judge any film.

As in Thomas McCarthy's first film, "The Station Agent", there is an air of loneliness to the characters in "Win Win" but also with an ability to be kind and with a whole lot of humour permeating throughout. Mike (Paul Giamatti) is approaching a mid-life crisis; the monotony of daily life and money troubles colliding. But this is a well written film and it doesn't look or feel like a mid-life crisis. Just as we get to know the characters exceedingly well (despite the short air time for some - Bobby Cannavale's Terry), a plot is introduced. Mike starts acting like a sleazy lawyer just to make some easy money, even though he's anything but a sleazy lawyer. Because he's a good guy, realities quickly catch up, and he starts taking responsibility for a troubled kid. Mostly trying to assuage his guilt of wrong-doing, but this kid happens to be a wrestling phenom and Mike is a struggling high school wrestling coach. This film could easily turn into an underdog sports story, but as I said before, this is a well written film and it doesn't look or feel like an underdog sports story. I found "Win Win" to be a great mix of character study, a mid-life crisis, and an underdog sports story all rolled into something that isn't any of the above. It's a light, funny, enjoyable slice of life that could provide a few lessons on morality but stops itself before it becomes condescending.

Win Win is a terrific multigenre sleeper. It's funny, even hilarious; it has mystery and action; and it features brilliant performances by the always-reliable Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan. It's also not a movie that wallows in treacly messages, and it's not a movie that uses sports as a crutch for "finding one's inner strength." In short, it's a wonderful, top-notch movie.

Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a small-time lawyer who's running low on cash. He moonlights as coach of the local high-school team, which is, to put it bluntly, terrible. In a burst of fiscal sanity, Mike offers to become legal guardian for Leo, one of his clients (played by the crusty Burt Young), who's just been declared legally incapacitated. Why? Because as his guardian, Mike gets $1500 a month. But since he wants to avoid the extra hassle of actually taking care of Leo, he puts him in a nice home. Seriously, it's a nice home, with nice people and a big flat-screen TV.

At this point, the movie wants us on Mike's side – sort of. He needs the cash, and he doesn't really want to tell his wife Jackie (Ryan) that they're running low, not with two young daughters to care for as well. Plus he's coach of a terrible team and is just swimming in stress. Swimming in it. So much so that while jogging to work off the stress, he suffers a panic attack.

Just when Mike thinks some of his problems have been solved, teenage Kyle (Alex Shaffer) walks into his life. Kyle, it turns out, his Leo's grandson, and they've never met. Kyle's been sent by his mom to visit Leo. At first, this complicates things – especially when Kyle seems awfully reluctant to go back home to Ohio – but then Mike's remaining big problem is solved. It turns out the kid is a gifted wrestler. Who'd have thought that? He looks scrawny, but in practices Kyle shows he has the mettle. And thus things are riding well for Mike.

But this would be a truly dull (if inspirational) movie if things continued to ride well. One thing we learn early on is that Mike intentionally misled the judge in Leo's case, giving the impression that he would be actively taking care of Leo. But things really get going when Kyle's druggie mom (Melanie Lynskey) shows up to bring her boy back – and to take over as Leo's guardian.

Too often, Giamatti has played real sad-sack characters, guys who just can't seem to catch a break, guys who suffer at the hands of fickle fate. Not so here. Mike isn't exactly a conniving mastermind, but he's not an idiot, either, and he deals with each situation with logic and reason, even as they spiral further out of his control. It's a typically masterful Giamatti performance, and for once he's not a total loser who's in over his head. He's even a half-decent coach who simply has a lackluster team to work with.

Giamatti's not alone, though. I really got a kick out of Amy Ryan's performance as his somewhat-exasperated spouse Jackie, who's not terribly fond of suddenly having a teenage boy around at first. A few years back, Ryan turned in an Oscar-nominated performance as a native Bostonian in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan had a thick, believable Boston accent then. Here, she's playing a New Jersey native, but at no point does she go overboard with the Jersey Shore dialect. That's what good actresses can do – they can dial it back when they have to and show a little nuance.

Win Win is not a stand-up-and-cheer movie, although the audience at the screening I attended applauded when it was over. It's not a crime drama, and it doesn't really have a lot of twists to its plot. What makes it work are all of the truly sincere, dead-on performances: by Giamatti, Ryan, Shaffer, Lynskey, Bobby Cannavale, and even Jeffrey Tambor as one of Mike's wrestling assistant coaches. Not a sour note in the bunch, everyone at the top of his or her game.

This might have fared well, critically, if it were released during awards season. It sort of reminded me of last year's Greenburg, starring Ben Stiller, only funnier and sweeter. Win Win is a charming, quiet movie that reminds us that, as the Grateful Dead once told us, once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.