Win Win is all about real-life relationships and staying with them.

Rating: Null/10 (18 June 2013)

"Mommy, where is Daddy?"
"He's running."
"From what?"
This dialog between mother and child sets the tone for the entire Win Win journey, which is a wondrous game of lose, win, win, win, lose, win. The movie should have been called Lose, Run, Win.
Our Mike Flaherty, played by Paul Giamatti, is running like a Hamster in a wheel, and we all know he ain't going' anywhere. But aren't we all stalled sometimes that way? Don't we all, at some point in our lives, find that we're not on the journey we planned because fabulous people turned up who made us take a detour from our path? The detour can either be a noose around our necks or something that makes the other dreams fade. Either way, it's not a simple as just taking a left turn at the corner stop sign. And Win Win nails that. It brings to life that which is lurking in a fog behind us all.
Win Win's strength is the wonderful relationships between each of the characters and the protagonist, Mike Flaherty, aka the fabulous Paul Giamatti. If Giamatti looked like Colin Firth, he would have been up for an Academy Award for this role.
Look at this cast? Could it get any better? Mike's relationship with his wife is subtle but remarkable. It shows the mixture of love and hate that has to exist in any marriage where both parties are in it to win it, rather than in it until they can't anymore. Amy Ryan (remember her from Gone Baby Gone?) is the perfect cross between nothing special and exceptional. She has her moments of stepping up, and then stepping down. It's a great lesson: you don't always have to have a big mouth—just when you really need to make your point. But she's also more than that. Her comments, facial expressions, and actions serve as our narrator and as a commentator on all the players. In a way, she's not really a part of any of the action going on; she is just the gel that keeps it all together. I would like to be her sometimes. She has a distance from the chaos and the drama that is quite comforting.
Alex Shaffer plays the grandson who shows up to reverse the spiral of destruction that is on the brink of permanent with his exceptional wrestling skills. He is straight-faced through the whole thing, and I love the way he puts everyone's name at the end of each sentence. This is Alex's first film. He was chosen because he really is a great wrestler, and while that may have gotten him the role, he's also a great actor. He has a lot of complicated feelings to display with very little dialog (all of which is spot-on). His relationship with his mother is also poignant. You have to love your mother, but loving her and joining her destructive journey are two very different things. His relationship with Mike's wife is the closest to intimate that he gets, and it's perfect. Believable. Poignant. Caring. And his relationship with his new friends on the team show the understanding he has that those who are flawed are forgivable.
Mike's relationship with his broken friend (played by Bobby Canavale, in his first big movie role) is really about two friends who are friends because of the longevity of their history, not the commonality of their evolved selves. We all have those. Come on, don't you?
Win Win is all about real-life relationships and staying with them. And Paul, my new favorite actor for a day, allows us to come along in his head and experience how his days turn into months that turn into years. Go see it. Go with your spouse. Your son. Your old friend. Or go by yourself and have a bite afterward and find the parallel relationships in your own life. It's a lot of fun, and it reminds you of why they are all worth it.