Features > Movie Reviews > Win Win…

Paul Giamatti isn’t your typical movie star. He’s short, pudgy, balding, and he seems to have been born middle-aged.

I was surprised, checking his credits, to find that he was in several big movies in the mid 90s, including Donnie Brasco, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Truman Show and Saving Private Ryan. But it was his portrait of the cantankerous comic book artist Harvey Pekar in 2003’s American Splendor that got him noticed, and his Oscar-slighted turn in 2004’s Sideways (when he won every other award in sight, but failed to get an Academy nomination) that made him an unlikely star. Not a conventional leading man, perhaps, but a character actor who could carry a film, someone in the tradition of Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman.

Since then we have seen him in the likes of Cinderella Man, The Illusionist, Lady in the Water, Shoot ‘Em Up, and HBO’s award-winning John Adams (directed by Tom Hooper prior to The King’s Speech), but Win Win is probably the closest Giamatti has come to replicating the wide appeal and compassionate comedy of Sideways.

Giamatti is Mike Flaherty, a small town lawyer who is finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet and (big mistake!) can’t bring himself to admit it to his wife (Amy Ryan). The stress leads him to a rash, opportunistic decision: he undertakes to care for a senile client in his home (thus pocketing a monthly caregiver’s fee from the state) while actually depositing him in a care home. Even after the fees have been deducted, he comes out well ahead.

The inevitable rebound comes in the unexpected appearance of the old man’s teen grandson, looking for shelter after his mum has gone into rehab. Kyle (Alex Shaffer) clearly has nowhere else to turn, so Mike winds up a caregiver after all, offering the kid a place to stay and a position on the school wrestling team he coaches.

Writer-director Thomas McCarthy made The Station Agent and The Visitor. The sports element threatens to make this a more generic effort, but for the most part he avoids cliché as he explores the gaping distinctions between the youth full of promise and vigor, and the middle aged mentor who is bogged down in his own struggles.

The interplay between Mike and his best friends and coaching partners Terry (Bobby Cannavale) and Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor) is very funny; Cannavale has a great time as the bitter divorcé, seizing on Kyle’s potential as the boost he desperately needs to get him through his rough patch – as if winning a high school tournament could really make a difference to his life. Of course a lot of us – men especially – tend to feel that vicarious victory is as good as we can hope for, a delusion McCarthy seems to understand well enough.

As Mike, Giamatti is sympathetic and utterly believable both in his good points (his common sense, kindly instincts and intelligence) and in his flaws (a certain secretiveness that mistakes cowardice for discretion). Amy Ryan is also excellent as his no-nonsense wife Jackie. The bond she strikes with Kyle gives the film a real emotional backbone that the male story might have missed. Melanie Lynskey, almost unrecognizable from her Heavenly Creatures days, can’t do much to make sense of Kyle’s underwritten mother, but she has a couple of piercing scenes all the same.

Maybe the ending doesn’t pack the punch that it might have. But Win Win is a real pleasure to watch, a gentle, funny, honest film about ordinary middle class people looking to stay ahead of the game. The movie itself is one of those small victories that help us through.