When was it decided that wrestling was a sign of sensitivity? It was implied that the troubled teen of The Kids Are All Right might be sending his brah a love letter every time he held him in a headlock. Now, in Win Win, in defiance of the sum of modern hyperconsciousness—and codes that have been programmed into every halfway savvy comedy since 2005—the gay subtext has been revoked. Kyle (Alex Shaffer), the misunderstood kid du jour, finds his way by fighting; when he pins his opponents, he has his demons by the horns. No wonder he’s a champ.
Kyle is practically a foundling—the nominal ward of his rather nominal grandfather Leo (Burt Young, whose characters’ screws were never too tight), himself the ward of his court-appointed attorney, Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti). A normally scrupulous lawyer, whose expanding family and modest practice are struggling to adjust to straitened times, Mike has taken on this responsibility so that he can receive an annuity from the state of New Jersey; Cindy (Melanie Lynskey), Leo’s meth-addict daughter and Kyle’s mother, is M.I.A. somewhere in Ohio. Enter Kyle—a bleached-blond, outsize stork dropping, waiting, in headphones, on grampa’s stoop. Unable to contact Cindy himself, Kyle is “adopted” by the Flahertys, too. He shadows Mike, who coaches the high school wrestling team, at practice; joins the team; and becomes its great white-haired hope. This laconic waif—who only looks like a “bad influence”—goes cold turkey on cigarettes and starts running laps at four A.M.; his opacity now registers as quiet charisma, and he befriends everyone, including the team pipsqueak (David Thompson). Even Mike’s wealthy pal Terry (Bobby Cannavale), whose dirty mind is doing laps of its own—around his ex-wife—is inspired. He becomes an assistant coach. Neither Mike nor Terry were all-stars when they hit the mat in high school; but now they have Kyle to live through—and, for the first time in ages, victories to look forward to.
Win Win never questions this vicariousness, which is sometimes the bane of parent-student athlete relationships. (Just ask the Emilio Estevez of The Breakfast Club.) But Tom McCarthy, who directed and wrote the script—he shares the story credit with Joe Tiboni, an elder-law attorney who was on the wrestling squad with him in high school—shows us how avidness for sports can transcend its value as simple escapism for people in trouble: a link that’s usually as broad as the shoulders of E.S.P.N. pundits, and thus an easy target for scoffers. Maybe the movie succeeds because it transcends simple escapism without ever transcending escapism itself. In the end, Kyle’s wins may signal long-term dividends but only short-term relief; Mike’s financial situation doesn’t improve. The film’s problem-play mechanics, and the neorealist look and sensibility, outsmart the sports narrative beneath—and yet Win Win thrives on its residual inspiration. Cannavale seems at first to have the ear-achingly obvious function of being the fount of enthusiasm that soaks through the dry flakes of indie irony; I felt the same way about him in McCarthy’s The Station Agent. He’s so in-your-face he seems skin deep. And yet we come to understand that all of Terry’s feelings are amplified; he needs this diversion; he has a bull horn attached to his heart.
Movie Monster 