Win Win

"This kid's got man-strength, dude."

The writer/director of Win Win, Thomas McCarthy, is killing it right now. After impressing audiences in season four of The Wire and several other small roles, he started his writing and acting career with two phenomenal films back-to-back; The Station Agent and The Visitor. With Win Win, he is now three for three, and this is probably his best film to date. The strength of McCarthy’s films seems to lie in the characters, and he continues to create characters that are both fascinating and jarringly realistic.

The always reliable Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer in a small town who is struggling to make ends meet and provide for his family. Mike has an elderly client, Leo (Burt Young), who is developing Alzheimer’s and doesn’t want to leave his home. Mike finds out that Leo is somewhat wealthy and his estate will pay $1,500 per month to his legal guardian; a sum of money that would help out with Mike’s money troubles. Mike decides to take on guardianship but doesn’t want to take care of Leo so he puts him in a nursing home. He lies to himself by saying Leo will be better off there but knows deep down this is the wrong thing to do.

Mike is the protagonist of the story, but how often do you see a protagonist do something as immoral as putting an old man in a home against his well? You might tell yourself, “I would never do something like that,” but are you certain? Can anyone honestly say they have never sacrificed someone else’s well-being for their own benefit? It is choices like this that transcend McCarthy’s characters from movie people into real people and they allow the audience to empathize with the situations that much more.

Everything seems to be working out and Mike’s financial pressures are relieved for the time being, until Leo’s unknown grandson Kyle (Alex Schafer) shows up hoping to live with Leo. This is impossible as Mike has stuck him in the nursing home, so Mike decides to take Kyle into his own house until he can figure out what to do with him. Kyle doesn’t have any other relatives other than his drug-addicted mother in rehab from whom he ran away in the first place. Mike’s wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) is not pleased by Kyle’s smoking and the fact he looks like a criminal, though the family begins to love him as if he were one of their own. Mike’s betrayal of Leo then threatens to surface, and the win-win situation he has created balances on the edge of a knife.

Kyle is, like Mike, another fascinating character. You are never given the full picture of his troubled past but you are able to ascertain details (an absent mother with an abusive boyfriend, etc.) through the handful of times he opens his mouth. Kyle is an angry teenager but is not a lost cause; he simply longs for a true emotional connection with someone and his genuineness as a person comes out in his interactions with Mike’s kids. Kyle’s outlet for his anger is in his wrestling, but even there he lacks self-control.

I won’t go into the story anymore, but the plot does a good job of avoiding the normal clichés of sports movies and family dramas. The outcome of the film is more or less predictable and there are no huge surprises, but it is enjoyable to watch the pieces to fall into place. It is fun to see Mike try to wiggle his way out of the mess he has created himself and you will be moved several times before the credits roll. There is a standout scene where Kyle is reunited with his mother and you experience firsthand the hatred he has built up toward her. It is painful to watch and sad to see a son who literally has nothing left for his mother.

Come Oscar season, Win Win will all but disappear beneath the hype of big hitters like Drive, The Ides of March, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Dangerous Method, J. Edgar, and Moneyball. Win Win does not look to compete with those films, not on budget nor on scope, but you would be doing yourself a disservice to miss out on this great movie.