Feature on Tom McCarthy’s new movie “Win-Win”
Tom McCarthy is a wonderful talent. Numerous acting credits including a great role as a news reporter in the late, lamented TV series “The Wire.” But it’s his writing-directing credits that cause me to just shake my head in admiration at his creative skills: The Station Agent and The Visitor. The movies are both little gems, compelling stories with deftly drawn characters. Oh, and there’s his “story by” credit on the Pixar movie Up.
McCarthy is at Sundance with his newest writing-directing effort called Win Win. Here’s an excerpt from an LA Times article on him:
“Tom is adamant about exploring every possible variation,” said Michael London, who produced both “The Visitor” and “Win Win,” alluding to McCarthy’s perfectionist tweaking on scripts, on set and in the editing room. “It’s painful at times, but in the end it’s exhilarating because he gets to a place most directors never get to.”
That place is visited frequently in “Win Win,” with McCarthy again exploring the poetry of the everyday, in which the lives of normal people take unexpected turns, usually after a chance encounter with a stranger. In the McCarthy canon, authenticity and nuance are prized. Characters are rarely all good or all bad, and they almost never say anything they wouldn’t say in real life.
“I would almost rather risk being boring as a writer than feel I’m manipulating an audience,” McCarthy said in an interview. “For 98% of our lives, we have boringness or stillness, and you can allow some of that in the movie.”
There is little, however, that’s boring about “Win Win,” which stuffs a surprising number of characters, genres and even laughs into its unassuming frame.
The movie begins with Mike Flaherty (Giamatti), a New Jersey father, lawyer and part-time high school wrestling coach facing financial troubles. After pulling a slightly underhanded move with an older client to make a few extra bucks, he finds he and wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) in a complicated relationship with the man’s disaffected teenage grandson (newcomer Alex Shaffer), who has shown up unexpectedly from Ohio.
The boy is a gifted wrestler, and “Win Win” soon turns into a high school sports film before veering back to family drama — all while sprinkling in a buddy comedy via a relationship between Mike and childhood friend Terry (Cannavale). If “Black Swan” blends ballet with horror, thriller and other intense genres, “Win Win” does the same with less Hitchcockian ones.