Great acting for a serious story

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2015)

In 1986, Mark Schultz, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist wrestler is on the low point of his life barely scraping for food while his brother Dave, also a 1984 Olympic gold medalist wrestler, lands a decent coaching job. One day the millionaire John Du Pont contacted Mark. Mark ends up getting a sponsorship from John to train for the 1988 Olympics. Mark asked Dave to join him at John's Team Foxcatcher, but Dave initially declines due to contractual reasons. Under John, Mark trains with a handpicked team other of other athletes and Team Foxcatcher succeeds in taking home two gold medals from the 1987 Wrestling World Championship. Throughout training John exhibits eccentric behavior like shooting a gun all of a sudden. At one point John decides he doesn't like Mark's training method so he pays out Dave's contract and gets Dave to join Team Foxcatcher.
John tries to serve his ego using Team Foxcatcher by introducing Mark as his protégé, claiming the title of the team's coach and making Dave only the assistant coach, filming a documentary about the team's preparation on winning the Olympics, and even returning into practicing the sport disregarding his old age. Even since before Dave arrive, John slowly poisons Mark with bad habit of drinking, skipping practice and even cocaine. This influences Mark significantly that Mark lost his first match on the Olympics selection. Mark is devastated by the defeat but Dave comes to him and helps him sobers up and prepares so eventually Mark wins the slot for the Olympics. But in helping Mark prepare, Dave prohibits John from seeing Mark. Mark feels this and asks Dave to quit the team together but Dave says they have to stay with their commitment. But Dave also sees what's coming and forces a deal to John that if John wants to keep Dave on the team even after the Olympics, John has to keep paying Mark.
John agrees to the deal because Dave and Mark agree to let John stand at Mark's corner in the Olympics. They go to Seoul for the Olympic game but Mark loses his matches. Back at home, Mark retires from professional wrestling while Dave stays to coach Team Foxcatcher. But one day, after seeing the completed documentary film he commissioned, John goes to drive on a car. He drives past Dave's place but then reversed the car to see Dave. Dave goes to greet him but John suddenly points out a gun at him. After asking a weird question, John shoots at Dave. He then runs away with his car.John soon gets arrested, convicted and goes to prison. Mark still scrapes for money, this time in the then up and coming sport of MMA.
The story nicely depicts the fate of athletes of less favored sports. Even though highly talented on the sport, some of the athletes and retired athletes face the same life as Mark's life depicted on this movie's start and end. The middle and focus part of the story portrays even a classic nature of man, that power, in this case deriving from one's wealth, ends up corrupting the owner. We can see the movie depicts how John gets to be erratic and selfish due to not knowing where or what else to spend his wealth on.
John feels that everybody can be bought with a certain amount of money. He doesn't seem to think of other people as equals to him due to this. His first impression of seeming to appreciate Mark on his early appearance in this movie seems to be root on that there is something that he wants in Mark, which is to win the Olympic gold medal.
I really like how the actors delve deep into the real techniques of the sport thus enabling this movie to portray the actors doing the sport as how it is meant to be done. I don't know if instead Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum actually have any background in wrestling, but if they don't, they turn out to be well enough wrestlers themselves to be able to execute such techniques well.
The acting in general is a great job. Channing Tatum is successful in depicting the almost desperate athlete looking for money. Although I must say that his role here doesn't really have his expressions to come out. Mark Ruffalo also acted well as the close brother yet now distanced by his responsibilities for his own family. But surprisingly, Steve Carrell's performance as John Du Pont is a great job in this movie. He really nailed the role, transforming into a totally different person. This is especially true when we compare it to Carrell's other works, most notably comedies in which he played the roles of less witted males.
My say is that Foxcatcher (2014) deserves a 7 out of 10 score and a recommendation. It's too bad that this movie doesn't really get distributed globally because with this level of acting and depicting a story based on true events, it surely succeeds in telling the serious story of athletes' struggle.