Stillwater

There's a great movie trying to come out in Stillwater, but because the movie's script is overstuffed and tries to cover too many topics, it ends up being a good one.  At the center of it all is a complex performance by Matt Damon, whose pathos carries the movie through any rough patches, and makes it worth following all the way through.

Damon plays Bill Baker, a man who could have easily come across as a stereotype, but Damon finds a lot of interesting angles here.  Constantly hidden underneath his cap and goatee, Bill Baker is the sort who religiously follows college football, listens to country music non-stop on his outdated iPad, and goes from one oil rigging job from the next to support his simple lifestyle.  We immediately notice his pained eyes, and it's an early sign Damon gives us that Bill, despite his seemingly simple life, has a lot of pain in his past and, as we soon learn, in his present.  Early in the film, he catches a flight to Marseilles, France, where his estranged daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) is currently halfway through a nine-year prison sentence for murdering her roommate and lover - A crime she says she is not guilty of, and whom Bill solidly believes.

The film is fiction, but has clearly been inspired by the real life court case of Amanda Knox, the American college student who was accused of murdering her roommate while studying in Italy back in 2007, and was acquitted eight years later.  Bill frequently visits Allison in prison whenever he can, and we can sense the strained relationship between the two.  After his wife took her own life when Allison was young, there has obviously been a lot of tension between the two.  A grandmother was the one who mainly raised Allison, and there's talk of Bill having a history of alcohol, drug use, and some jail time of his own.  When he's not visiting with her, giving her updates, he's hitting the streets, trying to reopen the case with some information he's received about a young Arab man at a bar the night of the murder who may have a connection.

Here, Stillwater tries to tackle the theme of racism on both sides, as Bill does not fully understand the culture, and there are those who clearly view him as an outsider.  It's during this search for anyone who can lead him in the right direction that he happens to meet Virginie (Camille Cottin), a stage actress and single mother to an adorable nine-year-old girl named Maya (Lilou Siauvaud).  Virginie offers to help Bill in his investigation by translating what people say and gathering information for him on line.  In turn, they strike up a friendship, and begin to form a family-like environment when Bill feels that his search for the truth will take longer than the two weeks he initially scheduled, and moves in with them.  His relationship with this woman and her girl makes up a good chunk of the film's middle portion, and seems to be hinting that maybe Bill has finally found somewhere he truly belongs in the most unexpected place.

After this stretch where it looks like Bill may find some kind of personal redemption for his past mistakes, the movie veers into much darker territory that will not be revealed here but, suffice to say, brings a lot of surprise revelations, and a curious plot point regarding a suicide attempt that is brought up, and then never spoken of again, as if that part of the film has been cut entirely.  So, why is it here if there is no follow up?  This is a movie with a lot on its plate, and a lot of themes.  There's the possible redemptive journey that Bill starts to undertake, but then it is immediately brought to a halt by the third act.  There's the focus on Bill's investigation into the mysterious man who might have a connection to the murder, but then that is stopped for the part of the movie where Bill moves in with Virginie and Maya, and starts to form a family bond.

Even with a running time of nearly two and a half hours, there seems to be a lot here that simply doesn't get the time it should.  There are some wonderful scenes here, especially the ones between Damon and Breslin, where they talk about how both of them have screwed up their lives, almost as if it has been passed from father to daughter.  And the scenes where Damon bonds with young Maya have a genuine sweetness to them without being cloying or overblown.  She's portrayed as a real little kid, not a one-liner spewing clone who gets to be cute each time she's on camera.  There are a lot of moments here that feel genuine and honest, but they are ensnared by a Hollywood plot that, at least doesn't want to give us a predetermined tidy ending, but also is a bit too mechanical and pat for its own good, considering what we learn.

I am recommending Stillwater, because of the strengths of what works here.  It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, it simply tries to do too much, and some of its strengths feel pushed aside at times just when the movie seems to really be getting great.  I think with a tighter focus, and a bit less loopy of a third act centered around one shocking reveal after another, this could have been one of the greats of the year.  You can certainly see hints of that greatness from Damon's performance.

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