Foxcatcher : Based of the events of a true story, Mark Schultz an Olympic wrestler gets a call to see a Mr John Du Pont; who offers Mark a chance to shine and to become a great champ. Mr Du Pont also shares an interest in his brother Dave who is a wrestling coach, Mr Du Pont's goal is to become the ultimate leader of a great team. Become the dad of the team. There is only one 'Foxcatcher'!
This film to me started off as being all a bit of a jumble, it just seem to correlate who was the main focus. It's starts off being about Mark Schultz, then it's about John Du Pont, then it's about Dave Shultz coming into the equation and it just goes back and forth exploring these three people as a human interest study as they prepare for a truly great event.
You've got three main men, (pictured above)
John Du Pont 'Steve Carrell' who wants to be the daddy of the team. He wants to be respected and the one who drives the team forward so it is 'his' success.
Mark Schultz 'Channing Tatum' has ambitions to be the best wrestler. To be 'The Champ'.
Dave Schultz 'Mark Ruffalo' is a coach, a trainer, a husband, a father and has many responsibilities in his life. I dare say even more than John Du Pont.
I don't want to hustle you with the details of the story because it's a lot to take in and it is quite a long film, and it doesn't help matters much that the pacing of it is so slow. It was like being in a car stuck behind an old man driving really slowly on the road and you can't over take him so you have to drive at the same pace as him. That's what I felt the pacing of this film was like, it took it's time in dealing out the drama of the story and the seriousness of it in small doses, which didn't help keep my interests in it up, I would of liked it to have picked up the pace a bit more and been more clean cut.
I liked the score and the incidental soundtrack, thought the piano music worked quite well with the surrounding environment, adding a state of surrounding and enthusiasm in establishing the drama and it is a serious drama piece with quite a few diversions and conflict between several people, within moments of the film starting, as soon as you get going and you want to learn more about the people behind the actors, the diversities of all three of the main men are quite extraordinary because they are so different with their own ideals and passion for what they do.
I will be honest, I didn't quite understand this film having seen it. I don't really understand the full premise of what it was trying to achieve. It's very good with what we've got. But I don't feel that I fully understood the subject matter of what was being addressed. I understood the history of the wrestling team and Foxcatcher and the ideals of John Du Pont and all the rest of it, but just the overall premise of it baffles me. What was this film all about?
Moving onto the acting. Mark Ruffalo is tremendous in this. Really outshines the rest of the cast by a clear mile and Identified to me the person he was portraying the best.
Channing Tatum, very good as well. After doing films such as '22 Jump Street' and 'Magic Mike' it's good to see him in a serious drama, because he can do serious really well. I'd say much better prefer him in a more subtle role than a comedic feature.
Steve Carell, wanting to try something new. I can see what he's trying to do but it doesn't do anything special for me. I do love Steve Carell, but not in a role as serious as this. I think 'Dustin Hoffman' would of made a good John Du Pont. What Steve does do very convincingly is capture the essence of the man he was playing, you can tell he really studied him, how he walks and his mannerisms and everything and that pays off in his performance.
Overall I thought the film was slow, but got a lot of intake from it and I'm still trying to work out what this film was all about. I don't even like Wrestling, I'm not a sports fan. I'll give it a 7/10 for now. It may go up, it may go down in later viewings. We shall have to see how well it does at the BAFTA's and the Oscars. Will Steve Carell get best actor Oscar? It could happen.
NEXT: Disney's Peter Pan.
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