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Nov 12, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

In the mid-1980s, John E. du Pont – of the DuPont chemicals dynasty, and at the time one of the richest men in America – invited Olympian wrestler Mark Schultz out to his 440-acre Pennsylvania farm with designs to turn part of his private complex into a wrestler training facility. Mark Schultz – and later, his brother, Dave – became lead trainers and key competitors for the new “Team Foxcatcher,” winning World Championships and Olympic medals. Their story would take a tragic shift in the late 1990s as the eccentric multimillionaire became increasingly unhinged, and dangerously delusional.

Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher is a finely-nuanced but unevenly-paced relationship drama, focusing on the strange triangle of masculine friendship and competition formed by the Schultz brothers and du Pont, who misguidedly viewed himself as both mentor and father figure. Steve Carell, beneath his occasionally distracting prosthetics and aging makeup, gives a film-stealing turn as the schizophrenic du Pont, turning him into an unnerving, unpredictable, and looming presence. Next to Carell, Mark Ruffalo – whose stocky, muscular body transformation is remarkable – gives a strong performance as the compassionate elder sibling. The weak link in the triumvirate, unfortunately, is Channing Tatum, though that may be more the blame of the role he plays. A moody meathead, at any given point of the film he’s either training or pouting; the role feels too shallow for the actor, particularly in the shadow of his co-star’s more complex characters.

While Foxcatcher remains compellingly watchable through its first three quarters, it fails in the pacing of its final act, where the storyline suddenly accelerates across several years’ worth of developments, and relationships fall apart at a dizzyingly rapid pace. The need to wrap up these characters’ sad, real-life stories is understandable, but you have to imagine it could have been handled in a way that felt less rushed and blindsiding.

www.sonyclassics.com/foxcatcher

Author rating: 6/10