Win Win

"Transformers 3" is sure to have more of them, and they will be louder. But the year's single most exquisite sound effect can be heard in "Win Win," the latest easygoing charmer from writer-director Tom McCarthy.

The film's protagonist, a cash-strapped suburban New Jersey attorney played by Paul Giamatti, works in an office with his fellow part-time high school wrestling coach, an accountant played by Jeffrey Tambor.

Business isn't great.

The hot-water heater in the basement needs repair, and like a nagging symbol of the money they don't have, it emits a sinister noise, somewhere near the juncture of a ping, a bong, a clang and a KLUNG-lung-lunnggggg.

In keeping with McCarthy's previous, modestly scaled work as writer-director, "The Station Agent" and "The Visitor," that sound effect is funny in a low-key way and does not cry out for our attention.

"Win Win" finds the versatile McCarthy, who has a parallel career as a character actor, doing his kind of sports movie. Meaning? A sports movie in which winning is neither everything nor the only thing. Friendship, honesty and a clear conscience all count for more in "Win Win" than the triumph of the human spirit, though in its depiction of an underdog wrestling team getting it together, it offers enough of that material -- in a funny, low-key way, that is -- to secure for McCarthy a sufficient audience to help him finance his next film.

Some of his plotting, it must be said, gets a bit knotty, which is surprising given how his scripts tend to be more effective than his more conventional direction. "Win Win" is about a basically good man who takes a basically deceptive risk. Mike (Giamatti) is married to Jackie (Amy Ryan). Their young kids haven't yet picked up on the financial stresses undermining the household. An elder care attorney, Mike becomes the legal guardian of an aged client, Leo (Burt Young, acting very little and therefore more affectingly than usual) in the early stages of dementia. Mike does this for the money; the extra $1,500 a month will go a long way to cure his nerves. Without being entirely forthcoming with his business or marital partners, he places the man in an assisted-living home, leaving Leo's house empty for the moment.

Then comes the conflict. Kyle, the troubled teenage son of Leo's missing daughter, shows up to escape a violent home life in Ohio, and to spend time with his grandfather. Mike and an initially reluctant Jackie offer Kyle a temporary bed in their home. Kyle is a wrestling phenom. Mike's team could use a wrestling phenom. This establishes the win-win of the title, though once the boy's recovering addict mother (Melanie Lynskey) appears on the scene McCarthy must contend with more narrative complication than his story structure can comfortably accommodate.

But the film offers plenty of good screen company along the way. McCarthy's stories concern makeshift communities, and outsiders being brought in from the cold. As with "The Visitor," which handed character man Richard Jenkins a role of a lifetime, "Win Win" works best when we're simply hanging out with the people on screen, watching them try to figure out each other's next move. The variously troubled but invariably decent people played by Giamatti, Ryan, Tambor and, as Mike's recently divorced pal, Bobby Cannavale, offer considerable rewards. As Kyle starts pinning 'em to the mat for the high school team, the coaches' memories of their own high school days become reactivated.

McCarthy was right, I think, to hire a real high school wrestler as Kyle, and though Alex Shaffer strains to keep up with the later sequences, when more drama than behavior is required, the casting works. In the supporting ranks there's a kid named Stemler played by David Thompson. Easily the worst, most cowardly wrestler on the team, he's built like a collapsed question mark. (I recognize the body type, believe me.) "Win Win" sticks mainly to the story of Kyle and Mike, but Stemler is priceless in the way the kid played by Daniel Stern in "Breaking Away" was priceless -- the dork with something extra.

 

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"Win Win" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: R (for language).

Running time: 1:46.

Cast: Paul Giamatti (Mike Flaherty); Amy Ryan (Jackie Flaherty); Bobby Cannavale (Terry); Jeffrey Tambor (Vigman); Alex Shaffer (Kyle); Burt Young (Leo); Melanie Lynskey (Cindy); David Thompson (Stemler).

Credits: Written and directed by Tom McCarthy; produced by Mary Jane Skalski, Michael London, Lisa Maria Falcone and McCarthy. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.

 

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