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Win Win (2011)
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Blu-ray Disc Released: 8/23/2011
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Review by Mike Long, Posted on 827/2011
People often mistakenly interchange the words prejudice and stereotype as if they mean the same thing, but they don't. Because of this, the act of stereoyping has gotten a very bad rap, but psychologists will tell you that it is often related to a natural sense of self-preservation. For example, if you hesitate before walking down a dark alley which is full of hooded men, are you being inconsiderate for assuming that there could be danger? I don't think so. Where am I going with all of this? Win Win is a movie which has several messages, but the most important one may be a specific lesson which we learn about the stereotypical lawyer.
Paul Giamatti stars in Win Win as Mike Flaherty, a small-town lawyer who isn't doing very well. He barely has any clients and he can't afford to fix the boiler in his office, which he shares with the equally unfortunate Stephen Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor). Mike hides his financial woes from his wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan). Mike and Stephen also coach the local high school wrestling team -- a group who is on a losing streak. Mike's practice focuses on assisting older individuals who are having difficulty taking care of themselves. Leo (Burt Young) has become unable to care for himself, and Mike can't locate his daughter. Therefore, Leo will need to be placed in a home. Realizing that he can make a sizable amount of money by becoming Leo's guardian, Mike does this...and then places Leo in a home. Mike goes to Leo's house to turn off the water, and finds a teenager named Kyle (Alex Shaffer) -- Leo's grandson. Kyle, who has never met Leo, has come to stay with the old man as his mother is in rehab. Unsure of what to do, Mike and Jackie take Kyle in and Mike soon learns that Kyle is an expert wrestler. Seeing a way to better himself once again, Mike enrolls Kyle in school and places him on the wrestling team. Everything is going Mike's way until Kyle's mother arrives.
My wife and I used to attend a conference for attorney's and, based on what she saw there and what we see in the media, my wife bought into the stereotype that all lawyer's are rich. I told her that this wasn't true -- I've seen this firsthand -- she refused to believe it. So, if nothing else, Win Win helps to dispel this myth, showing that Mike is a lawyer who is on the verge of losing everything. This is what drives this man, whose practice was designed to help people, to commit the desperate act of taking Leo's money. But, this is just the jumping off point for the many good things found in this film. (For the record, I'm not saying that we should feel sorry for attorneys. Just understand that they all aren't rolling in the dough.)
With his films The Station Agent and The Visitor, Tom McCarthy (who is also an actor, having appeared in movies like Meet the Parents and 2012) has created a name for himself as a well-reviewed director of independent films. With Win Win, he nudges a bit more towards the mainstream, but still succeeds in creating a multi-faceted movie which has many dimensions. In short, there is more than one facet to most everything in the movie. At heart, Mike is a nice guy and a family man, but he also fears losing everything because of his financial situation, so he does something which goes against his nature The mono-syllabic Kyle comes across as just another apathetic teenager, but he's simply a reflection of his upbringing. Mike's best friend Terry (Bobby Cannavale), who is going through a bitter divorce, presents himself as a knowledgeable businessman (although I’m not sure if we ever learned what his job is), but he’s just a big kid at heart who longs for his youth.
The movie works very well as a combination of drama and comedy (I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “dramedy”, as the focus is on the drama), and it also does a fine job of playing on our emotions. We want to like Mike, Mike is a likable guy, but what he did to Leo was criminal and hard to stomach. The same goes for Mike’s treatment of Kyle. It’s great that he and Jackie take Kyle in, but it’s clear that Mike is focusing on Kyle’s wrestling skills. Paul Giamatti is the perfect actor for this kind of role. He’s slumpy and unassuming -- what he’s doing borders on super-villain stuff at times, but it’s hard to hate him for it. We have a similar reaction to Kyle --his demeanor makes him inscrutable and difficult to relate to, but you can’t help but feel for the kid. On the comedic side, Bobby Cannavale steals the show with his erratic behavior. This leads us to the one flaw with the movie. There’s a lot happening in Win Win -- wrestling, fraud, parental disputes, Wii golf, etc. -- and the movie seems overwhelmed with keeping all of these things in place at times. Cannavale is funny in his role, but he seems to be in another movie.
In the end, Win Win doesn’t necessarily come across as an art-house movie, but it’s the kind of film which film criticism professors will love, as the wrestling in the movie can be seen as a metaphor for everything which is happening to Mike. Outside of that, we have a sweet and unassuming movie which presents us with believable characters and enough tears and laughs to keep us interested.
Win Win becomes yet another movie with pointless Star Wars references on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The movie has been letterboxed at 1.85:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 30 Mbps. The image is sharp and clear, showing a slight bit of grain and no defects from the source material. The colors are good, but naturalistic, and the image is never overly dark or bright. The level of detail is good as we can see the textures of objects, but I would say that the depth was only average. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 3.8 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. Being a low-key drama, we don’t get a ton of dynamic effects here, but the stereo effects are notable, as they nicely detail sounds coming from off-screen. The surround sound effects are at their best during the wrestling match scenes, as the crowd noise comes from the rear channels.
The Win Win Blu-ray Disc contains a few extras. The Disc holds two DELETED SCENES which run about 2 minutes. These are obviously brief, but one is interesting, as it shows more of Mike at work. "Tom McCarthy and Joe Tiboni Discuss Win Win" (6 minutes) has the two writers discuss the process which created the film. They give us a lot of information about things from their real lives (background in wrestling and law) influenced the story. "David Thompson at Sundance 2011" (2 minutes) follows the actor who plays the awkward Stemler around the film festival. "In Conversation with Tom McCarthy and Paul Giammati at Sundance 2011" (2 minutes) is a brief interview with the pair who talk about how the characters and how the project came together. "Family" (2 minutes) is a brief featurette which plays like a more detailed trailer, as McCarthy, Giammati, Ryan, and Cannavale describe the movie while we watch clips. We get the MUSIC VIDEO for the song "Think You Can Wait" by The National. The final extra is the THEATRICAL TRAILER for the film.
Review Copyright 2011 by Mike Long