Culpability and Personal Responsibility on a Human Scale Handled by an Excellent Cast

Rating: 8/10 (29 August 2011)

Having been impressed by his last directorial effort, 2007's "The Visitor" (which netted lead actor Richard Jenkins a well-deserved Oscar nomination), actor-turned-director/screenwriter Thomas McCarthy shows the same idiosyncratic attention to character in this quiet 2011 dramedy. It has the same ramshackle, off-kilter quality, this time focusing on middle-class New Jersey suburbia and the struggles of conscience that occur during economically challenging times. The protagonist is Mike Flaherty, a small-town attorney whose practice is sinking under the weight of mounting bills. He's also a family man with a wife and two daughters, who also moonlights as a high school wrestling coach on a losing streak. While representing Leo Poplar, a man suffering from dementia, he comes up with an unethical plan that has him taking over Leo's guardianship and pocketing $1,500 a month while keeping his client in a nursing home.
His plan is not without a certain remorse, and an unexpected turn occurs when Leo's surly 16-year-old grandson Kyle shows up from Ohio to live with his grandfather. Not being a bad guy, Mike takes Kyle into his home where he starts to fit in quite well, especially when it turns out he is a gifted wrestler whose success buoys the spirit of the team. Complicating matters, however, is Kyle's negligent, drug-addicted mother who suddenly shows up to reclaim Kyle and her father. Through it all, McCarthy shows a genuine gift for believable dialogue that unfolds the story without resorting to clichés or big moments that take his actors out of character for the sake of the story. In response, the cast he has assembled is superb. In his best big-screen role since "Sideways", Paul Giamatti portrays Mike with a fierce passivity that somehow elicits empathy to his character's sketchy behavior. Amy Ryan is his match as his tough-minded wife Jackie lending a moral certitude that Mike clearly lacks. Together they make one of the most credible married couples I have seen in any recent film.
Jeffrey Tambor lends his innate weariness to Mike's office mate who also happens to coach the wrestling team, and Bobby Cannavale, who worked with McCarthy on his first film, 2003's "The Station Agent", provides his particular motor-mouthed energy to Mike's oblivious best friend Terry, a hedge fund manager still manically obsessed with his ex-wife. Burt Young, still best known as Paulie in all the "Rocky" films, plays Leo in his familiar mumbling manner. Newcomer Alex Shaffer affectingly plays Kyle like a stone-faced version of Sean Penn's Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" until his character gradually warms to the Flahertys. As his estranged mom Cindy, Melanie Lynskey is touching as a woman whose sense of uncertainty informs her every move. David W. Thompson provides welcome comic relief as Kyle's hopeless insecure teammate Stemler, and Claire Foley is remarkably assured as the Flahertys' eldest daughter Abby. All the plot threads are so deftly handled by McCarthy and his cast that the larger themes of culpability and responsibility resonate on a very human scale.