Nick Clement brings us his Stillwater review here on Back to the Movies.
An American oil-rig roughneck travels to Marseille, France, to visit his estranged daughter, in prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit.
Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences and a complicated legal system, he soon builds a new life for himself as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate her.
A couple of items aside, this was very well done, featuring a quietly forceful performance from Matt Damon, and some great, on-location-in-France cinematography by the talented director of photography Masanobu Takayanagi (The Grey, Hostiles, Warrior, Silver Linings Playbook), who brought clear-eyed immediacy to the visual patterns.
Co-written and directed by Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, Spotlight, The Visitor), the film’s narrative uses the Amanda Knox incident as a launching point, but quickly becomes something totally different.
Even if I predicted a bunch of stuff, Stillwater remains engrossing all throughout, thanks to a strong emotional current between Damon and the young actress Lilou Siauvaud, who plays a local girl whose mother (Camille Cottin, very good) helps Damon’s character figure out if his daughter (Abigail Breslin, looking appropriately frumpy) was really responsible for a college murder that’s landed her in prison.
There’s a whiff of vigilante thriller thrown in, but that’s not what this movie is all about, and my guess is that there’ll be some folks who’ll be expecting that angle to take center stage, and then will be disappointed to learn that McCarthy and his team aren’t interested in that.
It’s kind of like the Geroge Clooney euro thriller, The American, in that regard, but that film was on an entirely different level.
I very much approved of the awesome digs at Trumper American culture that were smartly peppered into the script by McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey (Come Sunday, All Good Things), Thomas Bidegan (A Prophet, Rust & Bone, The Sisters Brothers) and Noe Debre (Dheepan, Les Cowboys), while McCarthy’s confident directorial hand guides the picture over one big plot coincidence, and a central conceit that I sort of find a tad flimsy.
But no spoilers will be found here, and it’s certainly no deal-breaker. Stillwater is currently available as a pay-rental item via various streaming providers.
Stillwater review by Nick Clement
Our Rating
Summary
A very well done, featuring a quietly forceful performance from Matt Damon and engrossing from start to finish. Well worth a watch!
