Stillwater (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Based very loosely on the Amanda Knox story, Stillwater concerns a father fighting to free his daughter from prison. An American father. A French prison. Where she's been for five years, and will be for probably four more. In a culture where precious few people speak English. After multiple appeals and investigations. When the French police and courts are certain that his daughter killed her female lover.

It's a messy story, one ripe for dramatic exploitation, and writer/director Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, Christopher Robin, 13 Reasons Why) mines it for most of its worth. In centering his story on the father's perspective, McCarthy aims the film squarely at an American audience, one still reeling from four years of politics that hated foreigners and distrusted government oversight. It's an interesting flip of the script, especially with the eminently likable Matt Damon as the protagonist. Bill Baker is the character's name, and he exclusively wears plaid shirts (or sleeveless band shirts), Wranglers, and a worn baseball cap. From his usually quiet mouth we occasionally hear a "Yes, ma'am" in a Southern drawl, or inquiries to French folk, "English? Speak any English?" He prays before every meal and listens to country music on his way to odd jobs of manual labor.

Despite appearances, he's not necessarily the Republican stereotype he seems, and this movie works hard to live in the complex interior life of characters who could be real people. His love for daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin), whose queer identity is almost ignored and whose relationship with the murdered ex-girlfriend is surprisingly honored by almost never being labeled or questioned, manifests in him leaving his titular Oklahoma hometown and actually moving to France. Once in Marseille, he finds construction work (he previously worked in oil) and befriends a local actress named Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud). They form an unexpected makeshift family, as the widower Bill tries to make up for his shortcomings in the past, and Virginie helps him investigate and litigate his way to Allison's freedom. Her mildly bohemian demeanor opens him up, and as she translates and guides him around the city, we learn that he's not the stereotypical character he's modeled after.

This emphasis on the power and unpredictability of socialization is buttressed by a theme of unconditional love of parents and children, and it could have made for a particularly mawkish flick. In McCarthy's capable hands, it's all remarkably unsentimental, and I really respect it for that. Bill gets second chances -- and of course he's working to get Allison a second chance -- and Damon's acting here is among his most nuanced. Much as in his Best Picture Spotlight, McCarthy's story is mostly about his protagonist knocking on doors and hitting the pavement to build a case. This time, though, the unexpected focus is on racial and class tensions: his interviewees alternately spew vitriol over Allison's deceased lover's Muslim identity or about Muslims and brown-skinned people in general. Shortly after Bill discovers his new prime suspect is a young Arab man, one of his interviewees looks at pictures of Arab men and says "they all look the same to me" and, to paraphrase, "pick one you want me to identify. I'm sure they've all committed a crime anyway."

The film suffers, though, in its final act, after what is already a bloated running time. Things turn shockingly to the bizarre, when (SPOILER ALERT) Bill abducts the suspect and keeps him locked in his apartment building's basement. It's the sort of shift that could have made a compelling story in itself -- think Taken meets Prisoners, and that's fine -- but that, after such a sensitive and thematically-minded setup, feels forced and almost like a betrayal of the characters and of the audience's intelligence. I wondered briefly, after a few crucial moments in which we close on Bill exclusively, if this sequence was meant to show his stress breaking him down into self-sabotaging behaviors he presumably had before, with his late wife and previous life. There's even a bizarre suicide attempt and some downright baffling writing and editing that made the final stretch of film feel like a different movie altogether. And then there's the conclusion of Allison's story which was a little too explained and a little too convincing; a bit more ambiguity about her relationship or her connections to the murder itself would have made for a much more powerful emotional story, and might have made the ending more satisfyingly ambiguous.

But I came for Matt Damon, and I definitely stayed for Matt Damon, and really that's what the movie is all about anyway.