Like Watching Bugs Eat Each Other in a Jar

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2015)

In "Foxcatcher," director Bennett Miller goes for a slow-boiling sense of building tension, but he keeps such tight reins on his film that he ends up almost suffocating it. Its clinical restraint works well at the beginning, but as things progress and something rotten begins to emerge from out of the film's bizarre true-life story, he refuses to change the film's pace and it begins to drag when it should be moving toward a conclusion.
I couldn't find much fault in the film's acting though, especially in Steve Carrell's uber-creepy portrait of a member of the DuPont family who serves as a nightmare version of the sense of privilege and exception that the super-wealthy can have about themselves. Channing Tatum hasn't completely convinced me that he's not just a flash in the pan, but he went a long way to earning my respect as the block-headed wrestler who wants to get out of the shadow of his brother and falls for DuPont's spell. And Mark Ruffalo brings his scruffy naturalness to the role of Channing's older brother, the biggest victim of the film and the only thing that comes close to giving this twisted and sordid tale something warm and normal to anchor it. Indeed, my biggest problem with the film is that it's like watching bugs in a jar -- it's so clinical and detached that I found myself morbidly fascinated watching these particular insects eat each other but not caring all that much about the outcome.
Grade: B