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Foxcatcher (2004)

thereviewers
May 23, 2015
3 min read

Foxcatcher focuses on the true story of how wealthy philanthropist John Du Pont attempted to build a wrestling dynasty by inviting Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz to his estate to help form a team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. However, as they work together, John Du Pont begins to lead Mark down a dark path while fixating on recruiting Dave to Team Foxcatcher.

Overall Review Score

2.5 out of 10

Review

Foxcatcher is a 2014, 118-minute, film that is loosely based on ten years of history, 1986 to 1996. During which the wrestling enthusiast and millionaire John Du Pont sets up a wresting training camp, recruits Mark Schultz and attempts to recruit Dave Schultz as Assistant Coach before slowly turns his back on the Schultz brothers and ends up resorting to murder. While the pretext for the film sounds good on paper and the history of the event provides rich characters, in reality the film fails to accurately capture events during 1986 to 1996, the relationship between John Du Pont and the two Schultz brothers and ultimately fails to engage with the audience. The script feels slow, the action scenes are dull, the music fails to build momentum and the overt use of prosthetic makeup is distracting. The film lacks both tension and action and the characters talk in low-level, monosyllabic tones that makes the audience nearly as angry as the constant scowl on Channing Tatum’s face. Despite these flaws, the film also suffers as it departs massively from reality and fails to portray both the 6 and a bit years that Dave Schultz and John Du Pont lived together, without Mark, at the Foxcatcher estate and the 48-hour siege of the Du Pont family estate that culminated in Du Pont’s arrest. These departures and failure to include critical scenes meant the film lost tempo, action, and tension that it needed to counteract its other, previously mentioned, problems. Overall, Foxcatcher is a film that just fails to please and does not do justice to the real-life events depicted within. It should be avoided, unless you want a slow, jittery and unentertaining thriller.

Reviewer 1's score & comments:

Score: 1 out of 10

Comments:

Foxcatcher entices the audience with an exciting premise, storyline and well-known actors that can display a range of on screen emotions. However, what was delivered in this 118-minute feature was worse than I could ever have imagined. The story was agonisingly slow and each new character presented the audience with the same lifeless acting, lack of emotions and monotone voice that ultimately made it hard to connect on any level with this film. Coupled with Du Ponts deep-seated mother issues, false sense of entitlement and stuck up attitude made this one of the worst films I have watched in some time.

Reviewer 2's score & comments:

Score: 4 out of 10

Comments:

I had high hopes for this film and am somewhat disappointed that the Director, Bennett Miller, failed to make this film entertaining, enjoyable or even watchable. Well the storyline is based in reality and does contain some interesting elements, such as, the relationship between Mark and Dave Schultz and equally the relationship between John Du Pont and Mark Schultz, the film ultimately fails to connect. It feels disjointed, clunky and uncoordinated in more than one place and the ending, which involves one of the main characters being murdered, leaves the audience feeling nothing: no remorse, no anger, no nothing – which is always a clear sign somewhere, something has gone seriously wrong. Overall, Bennett Miller and the cast could have done better.