Review: 'Stillwater' lets Matt Damon dive deep into a compelling American character, under the guise of a crime thriller
It’s odd that the actor Matt Damon and the director Tom McCarthy haven’t made a movie together before “Stillwater,” because their styles are remarkably similar: Simple on the surface, but with dark currents roiling underneath.
McCarthy, who directed the 2015 Best Picture Oscar winner “Spotlight,” starts here with something that feels ripped from the headlines. An American college student, Allison (Abigail Breslin), is in prison in Marseille, France, convicted of killing her roommate.
The movie starts five years later, in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Allison’s home town. That’s where her father, Bill (played by Damon), an unemployed oil-rig worker who finds odd jobs in construction and wherever else he can. He makes the trip to Marseille when he can, usually with financial help from his late wife’s mother, Sharon (Deanna Dunagan).
On this trip, Allison asks Bill to deliver a letter to her lawyers, but not to read it. Bill reads it anyway, and learns Allison is clinging to the slim hope that the lawyers can find someone with a lead to the person Allison is sure killed her roommate. The lead attorney (Anne Le Ny) advises Bill to give up the search, and try to convince Allison to accept the verdict — which will make it easier for Allison to be paroled.
Bill decides, stubbornly — a very American attitude, he’s told often while in France — to do his own sleuthing. He asks for help from Virginie (Camille Cottin), a Frenchwoman he met semi-randomly at his hotel, to help him navigate the language when he finds a lead. That information leads Bill to a rough part of town, where he gets beaten up badly. When he lands in the hospital, he calls the only person he knows: Virginie.
The script — by McCarthy and Marcus Hinchey (“Come Sunday”), with French screenwriters Thomas Bidegain (“A Prophet”) and Noé Debré (“Dheepan”) sharing writing credit — jumps ahead a few months at this point. Bill works construction in Marseille, and also finds work as a maintenance man in Virginie’s apartment building. He rents a room from Virginie, a stage actress, and helps look after her 9-year-old daughter, Maya (Lilou Siauvaud).
Bill seems to be settling into a new life, and even possibly romance with Virginie. But thoughts of Allison’s case are never too far away from Bill’s mind — and when he sees a chance to clear Allison’s name, he must decide whether it’s worth risking his relationship with Virginie and Maya.
Though McCarthy and his co-writers salt “Stillwater” with elements of a crime thriller, that’s just the decoration for a deep character study. Bill is the ultimate innocent abroad, a roughneck who finds himself in a place where the culture and language are unfamiliar to him, but he manages to find a lifeline through his fatherly concern for Allison and his quasi-paternal relationship with Maya.
It’s a tricky character to pull off, and Damon does it with understated grace. Damon neatly underplays Bill’s working-class gruffness, which serves as armor for the tender heart beneath. Nearly every important scene has Damon playing against one of his female co-stars, a dynamic that invites blustering machismo — but Damon and McCarthy subvert expectations by letting Bill’s softness emerge in unexpected ways.
Within that strong supporting cast, the standouts are Cottin, whose Virginie shows Bill the life he could have on the other side of the Atlantic, and Breslin, who has matured admirably since her “Little Miss Sunshine” days into a ferociously emotive actress.
“Stillwater” springs some surprises in the final 30 minutes, but this isn’t a movie that lives or dies on a twist ending. The work by Damon and McCarthy to establish Bill as a man caught between two worlds is where this drama gets its considerable strength.
——
‘Stillwater’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, July 30, in theaters. Rated R for language. Running time: 140 minutes.