The greatest Olympic Wrestling Champion brother team joins Team Foxcatcher lead by multimillionaire sponsor John E. du Pont as they train for the 1988 games in Seoul - a union that leads to unlikely circumstances.
This is meticulous, controlled filmmaking, but as stiff as a board.
Another dramatic triumph for Bennett Miller, though it is his toughest and least glamorous outing yet. A sad and horrible story, expertly and compellingly told.
Sometimes unnerving, it’s too often inert.
A hypnotically disturbing triumph for Miller and his cast. Bruisingly intimate and psychologically nuanced, its spiral into savagery lingers like a bad dream.
Muscular performances match Miller’s solid direction.
Steve Carrell is creepily brilliant but this film is hollow at its core.
Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo give career-best performances in the horribly magnificent true story of the billionaire who mentored the US Olympic wrestling team.
Director Bennett Miller made Moneyball and really knows how to get the best out of his actors.
The performances all seem utterly authentic...so that you do have the sense that you feel some of what the characters are feeling, and there is something hypnotic and compelling about the slow-motion tragedy that befalls them.
The result is bleak, unnerving and dispiriting. Rocky it ain’t.
Foxcatcher is not an easy watch. Its oppressive atmosphere is draining, and Miller’s formalistic approach is so carefully judged and controlled it almost wills us to tap out. But that sense of discomfort is sometimes a price worth paying when a film aspires to be more than mere entertainment, as this one surely does.
Steve Carell is unrecognisable – and wonderful – as the strange, sports-obsessed millionaire who lost the battle against his own demons with disastrous results.
Foxcatcher: the tale of two Olympic stars and an offer they should have refused
Foxcatcher Q&A
Foxcatcher: the 'uneasy relationship between money and creativity'
Bennett Miller & Steve Carell
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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