Foxcatcher

I've always thought that the sport of wrestling was an odd one. I could never figure out why men would want to get rubbed down by other dudes before getting on a small mat to wrap their arms and legs around other half naked men. The only way this was ever acceptable to me was if face paint, masks, folding chairs, and managers with Jeri curls and megaphones were involved. Heck, to this day I still strut around the house like I'm Brutus the Barber Beefcake from time to time!

So when I saw the trailer for Foxcatcher a few months ago, I found myself yawning within the first 60 seconds of it. Who cares about some dude who looks like Willow or one of the dwarves from the Hobbit movies yelling at Channing Tatum? But then I realized that Willow was in fact Steve Carell with a ton of makeup on; so I did some research into the actual story and decided to check it out based upon the fact that it was beyond weird. By the way, the only way I can take Carell these days is if he's completely unrecognizable because his act is far from funny to me.

But moving on, this movie is about wrestling super freaks Mark and David Schultz; two of the greatest wrestlers in U.S. Olympic history. Mark has always lived in the shadow of his older brother David as he is the better wrestler, the more popular, and the more settled of the two. He is the one that everyone wants to get to and has the traditional family life that everyone strives for. Mark meanwhile lives by himself and does nothing but literally train all day.

And you can see the unspoken tension that exists between the two within the first few minutes of the movie as they train together in one of the film's most intense fighting scenes. Not one word is spoken but you learn everything you need to know about the two and their relationship in that five minute sequence, which is a credit to director Bennett Miller's (Capote, Moneyball)skill.

One day out of the blue, the eccentric (and that's putting it nicely) John du Pont contacts Mark and asks him to train and be a part of the wrestling team that he's putting together. Mark accepts as he finally has financial support to help him train for the Olympics but as time passes you begin to learn why du Pont asked Mark to be on the team and that's when things start to get really weird!

Carell, even with the stupid prosthetic nose, does an excellent job of morphing into the oddball multimillionaire and for the most part keeps his usual wackiness away from the character. There is one moment when he introduces cocaine to Mark for the first time where he does sneak some Carell in but it makes you wonder if that scene was actually written in the script or if that was just a moment in time that was caught on camera in between shots. It seems as though it came just a little too natural for him.

Tatum is great as Mark as his approach to Schutlz is similar to that of Matthias Schoenaerts' in Bulldog; he's basically this emotionally unstable bull that's walking around the rest of humanity as if he's an alien just waiting to be rescued and returned home. Even Mark Ruffalo is fairly likeable in this film as the older brother David.

The problem with this movie is that it's way too long and runs a little slow at times, so make sure you are well rested when you go see it. But it is definitely worth seeing in the theaters for the actors' performances alone; I just hope that Carell doesn't steal the Best Actor award from Jake Gyllenhaal because he decided to look like a troll for the first time ever.

I rate this movie as FRESH!