No.302 : Win Win (2011)

Win Win at the IMDb

Paul Giamatti plays Mike in this family/sports drama, a struggling lawyer with few clients and no money for a boiler repair. He has an evening job where he teaches high school students wrestling but his team has never won a match. He hides his financial woes from his lovely wife Amy Ryan, who appears to have dumped Michael Scott, and their young children.

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

No. 155 : WrestleManiac (2006)

Wrestlemaniac at the IMDb

Here we go with yet another slasher pic where the bad guy hacks his way through a group of kids leaving just one to run around finding the other’s bodies before a final confrontation. The twist here? The bad guy is a former wrestler, and that’s about it really. God knows why films like this are made when they have nothing new to offer apart from a few slightly different murders. There are a couple of crumbs of interest but far fewer than you’d need to justify watching, even with a skinny 75 minutes run time.

Despite it’s barely feature length running time the film has a leisurely four minutes of pre-credits which are shown over some vintage footage of Mexican wrestlers - mood setting or run time padding - you decide. Our group of fodder are three guys and three girls in a van who are scouting locations for a porn film they plan on shooting in Mexico. Given that they only have one camera you’d think they’d be better off filming in someone’s flat but these are clearly amateur pornographers.

After getting lost they stop at a predictably run down gas station and are given a warning from a crusty stranger. A seemingly legendary town is nearby and they shouldn’t stop on pain of death. One of our team is luckily an expert on Mexican wrestling lore and insists that the town is the next stop. Legend has it that in trying to secure an Olympic gold the authorities chopped up their three best wrestlers to make one superhuman fighter. He turned out great but sadly maniacal so they stuck him in some remote town and forgot about him.

You can probably guess the rest!

The gang set about making the tamest porno you’ll ever see but one by one they drift away for their appointment with doom. Most of the deaths are seen from the killer’s POV so obviously that saves on the special effects budget. The killings are pretty routine but in keeping with the Mexican wrestling tradition of unmasking opponents he rips off their faces and sticks them on the wall. The wrestling expert deduces that they can stop the bad guy by removing his mask but this proves to be easier said than done.

Soon enough we’re down to just one lady who runs around screaming and finding all the bodies. Can she possibly best the greatest wrestler in history and get away in the van? Hmmm, possibly not.

This was a competent enough slasher film but it offered little of real interest and it’s basically just a run of the mill picking them off cookie cutter special. The wrestling angle was OK and offered some decent plot points but it effectively boiled down to the masks thing and that wasn’t enough to hang the film on, even one as short as this. Of the cast I liked Alphonse the best as he has a bit of sass and the few decent lines all to himself. The fat wrestling nerd never convinced and the woman severed only as eye candy and for screaming a lot.

You’ll see worse but probably nothing so derivative of the genre as this, and frankly you’ll get a more original script from the WWF. Three count? Three out of ten if you’re lucky!

Best Bit : here comes the plumber!

‘W’ Rating : 6/23