He has friends in Hank Kingsley and Bobby Cannavale, who spends his time stalking his ex-wife and hanging about the locker room. No, not like that. Opportunity knocks for Mike when one of his few clients, Paulie out of ‘Rocky’ is declared incompetent and made a ward of the state. Mike moves in to offer to take over the old man’s care when his secretary mentions the fee for doing so is $1508 a month. Mike’s gesture isn’t magnanimous - he just wants the cash and immediately sticks the old man into a care home.
His plan looks good for about five minutes before Paulie’s grandson Kyle shows up, having run away from his deadbeat mother. This complicates things for Mike who has to house the youth in his basement whilst the boy’s mother goes through rehab. Things liven up when Mike learns that Kyle is a talented wrestler and soon the whole team is being dragged up due to his superior technique and winning performances.
It looks like Kyle may get a wrestling scholarship, but then his Mom appears with lawyer. The court transcript exposes Mike’s scheme and the mother wants Dad back - along with the keep money. Kyle doesn’t want to go back and Paulie wants to go back to his home. Who will get a happy ending out of this soap opera’s worth of dilemmas?
I’ve seen this film twice now having failed to review it the first time around - a shocking ‘W’ related crime that will not be repeated. It worked out well though, as I enjoyed it the second time too!
Paul Giamatti was good as always - he never stretches himself too far, but as a rotund every-man he’s hard to beat. He was punching above his weight with Amy Ryan but good luck to him. Hank was a bit wasted and didn’t really have too much to do in his assistant coach role. Cannavale was better, and as a threesome they were good value as middle aged men trying to live out their dreams through their young charges.
Mike’s first action was to con the court and the old man and despite that you never really took against him. He was in dire financial straights with his wonky boiler, but his early actions didn’t ring true with the rest of the film. Good people make mistakes but this just looked reckless and mean.
The wrestling scenes were well done and, although there were no suplexes or jumps from the top turnbuckle, former wrestler Alex Shaffer did well as Kyle, despite his ‘Eminem’ haircut. Down the cast list I didn’t buy Melanie Lynskey as the scummy mum as she looks too darn nice. I liked Nina Arianda as Mike’s savvy secretary and it took me a while to place her as Axe's girl in the last series of ‘Billions’
Overall this was an excellent character study with plenty of laughs and rye ‘life’s like that’ moments. I’m glad a kind of happy ending was found, but it wasn’t one that wasn’t without cost and it was hard won.
Pick it off the mat and give it a go!
'W' Rating 20/23
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