Review: Stillwater

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

For most of its running time, Thomas McCarthy's "Stillwater" is a solid drama based somewhat on the Amanda Knox case - in which an American foreign exchange student was accused in 2007 of murdering another girl, jailed for several years, acquitted and eventually set free - until a last minute plot development throws it off kilter and makes it a little more melodramatic than it needs to be.

But up until that point, the picture is carried along by a strong Matt Damon performance. In the film, he plays Bill Baker, a former ne'er-do-well - or so we're told - who has tried to make amends by living a quiet life in which he works construction or for oil-drilling companies in Oklahoma. He has a strong Southern accent, answers mostly with "yes, ma'ams" or "no sirs," listens to country music while driving, says a prayer before every meal and makes no qualms about owning two guns. 

In a lesser movie, Bill would come across as a stereotype, but Damon gives this character some subtle shades. He's neither the stoic man from the plains states nor is he the stereotypical middle-American who voted for Trump - upon being asked about that, he notes that he couldn't vote due to a criminal record, but says no more on the matter.

When we meet him at the beginning of the picture, he is traveling - and seemingly not for the first time - to Marseilles, where his daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin) has been held for several years in a French jail after being convicted of murdering a Middle Eastern girl with whom she'd been having an affair. Allison wants her lawyers - portrayed as mostly useless - to reopen the case, and she claims her innocence. Her father believes her, but when the lawyers prove not to be helpful, he sort of opens his own case, in a manner of speaking.

There's a plot element that really shouldn't work here - Bill's next door neighbor is a French theater actress named Virginie (Camille Cottin) who has an adorable and precocious daughter named Maya (Lilou Siauvaud), and he eventually becomes friends with them after Virginie offers to become a translator for him during his quest. This is in exchange for a kindness he does for her young daughter.

For much of the film, the story involving Allison's court case and a mysterious man named Akim, who might hold the answer to what happened during the death of Allison's lover, pop up now and then, but the real heart of the movie is Bill's friendship with his neighbor and her daughter. The picture thankfully moves quickly past any sort of quirky or cute element involving a Red State American hanging out with a French actress and her charming daughter, and takes the scenario seriously. That's what makes "Stillwater" so compelling for so long.

There is, unfortunately, a plot thread that involves tracking down Akim that eventually leads the picture down a direction that is a little silly - it's similar to Denis Villeneuve's "Prisoners," although that film handled such a storyline much better - and somewhat unnecessary, other than to provide a piece of evidence with which Bill will confront his daughter at the film's end.

That misstep aside, "Stillwater" is a solid film - Damon is very good, and so are Cottin and Siauvaud, and Allison's case is engrossing until the film makes the aforementioned miscalculation. The film has what some might call a "happy ending," although it's bittersweet in one aspect, and a final line of dialogue from Bill points to the possibility of a character opening himself up to the concept of change. McCarthy has previously plucked a story out of the headlines - his Oscar-winning "Spotlight" - with great results, and even if "Stillwater" isn't on the level of that film, it's still good and well worth seeing for the parts that work.