stillwater movie review ebert

‘Stillwater’ Review: Matt Damon Gets to the Heart of How the World Sees Americans Right Now

'Spotlight' director Tom McCarthy collaborates with top French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain in this humbling Marseille-set crime drama.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Americans are used to watching Americans save the day in movies. That’s the kind of hero Bill Baker wants to be for his daughter Allison — a young woman convicted of murdering her girlfriend while studying abroad — in “Spotlight” director Tom McCarthy ’s not-at-all-conventional crime thriller “ Stillwater .” The setup will sound familiar to anyone who remembers the Amanda Knox case: Five clicks in to a nine-year sentence, Allison has always maintained her innocence. After new evidence arises, she writes a letter to her lawyer asking for help. But she’s careful not to involve her dad directly. “I cannot trust him with this. He’s not capable,” she writes.

To a particular kind of man, words like that are a direct challenge. And when that man is played by Matt Damon in sleeveless T-shirts and a bald-eagle tattoo, we expect him to save the day anyway. Maybe he does, but that’s not the reason McCarthy chose to tell this story. Originally, he just wanted to film a mystery in a Mediterranean town, deciding at some point that the French port of Marseille would do the trick. But in the time that it took to make the movie, something changed with America. Maybe you noticed. Certainly, the world did.

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McCarthy tells “Stillwater” from Bill Baker’s point of view, but he invites audiences to see the character from others’ perspectives as well, to observe how this out-of-place roughneck looks to the people he meets abroad — and especially to a single mother named Virginie (“Call My Agent!” star Camille Cottin) whom the gruff widower befriends early on. Back home in Stillwater, Okla., Bill does odd jobs since losing his oil-rig gig. He wouldn’t be in Marseille if not for his daughter (Abigail Breslin). He’s not a tourist, and he’s not interested in learning the language. But he’s not the stereotypical “ugly American” either. Bill prays, he’s polite and he believes in doing the right thing. And if Allison says she’s innocent, then the right thing in this God-fearing, gun-owning guy’s eyes is to help her prove it.

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Now, anyone could’ve written that movie. But McCarthy was smart: He enlisted the top screenwriter working in France today, Thomas Bidegain (“A Prophet”), and his writing partner Noé Debré to collaborate and wound up with a completely different movie. Well, maybe not completely different, but different enough to disappoint those expecting to see Matt Damon whip out a gun and kick down some doors in pursuit of justice. (Let Mark Wahlberg make that film.)

Bidegain’s signature — the thing that sets him apart from the vast majority of screenwriters — is that he doesn’t write “the scene where” a specific plot point is supposed to happen. Watching most Hollywood thrillers, that’s all you get, as if the creators bought a bunch of index cards, divided the movie into story-advancing moments (the scene where A, the scene where B) and taped them to the wall, then built the script from that. Bidegain knows we’ve all seen enough movies that such literal-mindedness gets boring, and so he and Debré come at each scene sideways: They let certain things happen off screen, focusing instead on seemingly mundane snapshots that reveal far more about character.

“Stillwater” contains a mix of both approaches — a scene where a friend of Virginie’s asks Bill whom he voted for is a prime example — and while it’s hard to say who wrote what (Marcus Hinchey, of terrific Netflix drama “Come Sunday,” is also credited), the movie’s more interesting for being less obvious. Naturally, Bill wants to clear his daughter’s name, and “Stillwater” shows him going about it. But the cultural barriers make it impossible to get far by himself — a trip to north Marseille’s notorious Kallisté neighborhood leaves him hospitalized — and so he enlists Viriginie, winning her over by being kind to her 8-year-old daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud).

Of course, Bill can’t change French law, and it’s not clear that even if he could locate the guy Allison claims was responsible — an Arab who was there in the bar that night — he’d be able to overturn her conviction. But as he and Virginie spend time together, Bill shows Maya the kind of fatherly concern he was too drunk and reckless to give Allison when she was a kid. The guilt of that irresponsibility weighs heavy on Bill, adding another dimension to Damon’s remarkable performance. There’s something caveman-like about the way the actor carries his body, in the scowl on his face and slow drawl of his Southern accent. The character has a temper problem, and from the looks of him, he could tear someone in two — although that might not be advisable in a foreign country.

After hitting a dead end in the investigation, Bill decides to stay on in Marseille. He moves in with Virginie and Maya, picking up a few words of French and playing handyman around the house. To dub this Bill’s redemption might oversimplify things, although something’s plainly changing in him. And that change is the soul of “Stillwater.” Resisting any temptation to be cute, yet bolstered by child actor Siauvaud’s immensely sympathetic presence, the movie gives Bill — as well as audiences — a taste of another life.

Will Americans who haven’t been abroad connect with this part of the movie? Or will they be bored with every second that Bill isn’t proactively trying to prove Allison’s innocence? At 140 minutes, “Stillwater” spends a lot more time on Bill’s new domestic situation with Virginie and Maya than viewers probably expect. But then, these scenes take time, since they’re tasked with conveying more than just the latest development in the case. (By contrast, straightforward genre movies have the luxury of being tight.) Ironically, the clunkiest scene here occurs when the cops show up.

McCarthy has more on his mind, using Damon’s character to “make hole” (as roughnecks do) in various assumptions Americans hold about themselves. Bill serves as a mirror of what foreigners see when a certain kind of cowboy barrels through the saloon doors of another country, hands on his holster, and it’s not necessarily flattering. On the surface, that may not satisfy everyone, but then, to coin a phrase, “Stillwater” runs deep.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition), July 8, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 140 MIN.

• Production: A Focus Features release of a Participant, DreamWorks Pictures presentation of a Slow Pony, Anonymous Content production, in association with 3Dot Prods., Supernatural Pictures. Producers: Steve Golin, Tom McCarthy, Jonathan King, Liza Chasin. Executive producers: Jeff Skoll, David Linde, Robert Kessel, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda, Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré. Co-producers: Raphaël Benoliel, Melissa Wells.
• Crew: Director: Tom McCarthy. Screenplay: Tom McCarthy & Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain & Noé Debré. Camera: Masanobu Takayanagi. Editor: Tom McArdle. Music: Mychael Danna.
• With: Matt Damon, Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin, Lilou Siauvaud, Deanna Dunagan, Idir Azougli, Anne Le Ny.

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‘Stillwater’ Review: Another American Tragedy

Matt Damon plays a father determined to free his daughter from prison in the latest from Tom McCarthy, the director of “Spotlight.”

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By Manohla Dargis

A truism about American movies is that when they want to say something about the United States — something grand or profound or meaningful — they typically pull their punches. There are different reasons for this timidity, the most obvious being a fear of the audience’s tricky sensitivities. And so ostensibly political stories rarely take partisan stands, and movies like the ponderously earnest “ Stillwater ” sink under the weight of their good intentions.

The latest from the director Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”), “Stillwater” stars Matt Damon as Bill Baker. He’s a familiar narrative type with the usual late-capitalism woes, including the dead-end gigs, the family agonies, the wounded masculinity. He also has a touch of Hollywood-style exoticism: He’s from Oklahoma. A recovering addict, Bill now toggles between swinging a hammer and taking a knee for Jesus. Proud, hard, alone, with a cord of violence quaking below his impassivity, he lives in a small bleak house and lives a small bleak life. He doesn’t say much, but he’s got a real case of the white-man blues.

He also has a burden in the form of a daughter, Allison (a miscast Abigail Breslin), who’s serving time in a Marseille prison, having been convicted of savagely killing her girlfriend. The story, which McCarthy conceived of (he shares script credit with several others), takes its inspiration from that of Amanda Knox, an American studying in Italy, who was convicted of a 2007 murder, a case that became an international scandal. Knox’s conviction was later overturned and she moved back to the United States, immortalized by lurid headlines, books, documentaries and a risible 2015 potboiler with Kate Beckinsale .

Like that movie, which focuses on the sins of a vampiric, sensation-hungry media, “Stillwater” isn’t interested in the specifics of the Knox case but in its usefulness for moral instruction. Soon after it opens, and following a tour of Bill’s native habitat — with its industrial gothic backdrop and lonely junk-food dinners — he visits Allison, a trip he’s taken repeatedly. This time he stays. Allison thinks that she has a lead that will prove her innocence, which sends her father down an investigative rabbit hole and, for a time, quickens the movie’s pulse.

McCarthy isn’t an intuitive or innovative filmmaker and, like a lot of actors turned directors, he’s more adept at working with performers than telling a story visually. Shot by Masanobu Takayanagi, “Stillwater” looks and moves just fine — it’s solid, professional — and Marseille, with its sunshine and noir, pulls its atmospheric weight as Bill maps the city, trying to chase clues and villains. Also earning his pay is the underutilized French Algerian actor Moussa Maaskri, playing one of those sly, world-weary private detectives who, like the viewer, figures things out long before Bill does.

Much happens, including an abrupt, unpersuasive relationship with a French theater actress, Virginie (the electric Camille Cottin, from the Netflix show “ Call My Agent !”). The character is a fantasy, a ministering angel with a hot bod and a cute tyke (Lilou Siauvaud); among her many implausible attributes, she isn’t ticked off by Bill’s inability to speak French. But Cottin, a charismatic performer whose febrile intensity is its own gravitational force, easily keeps you engaged and curious. She gives her character juice and her scenes a palpable charge, a relief given Bill’s leaden reserve.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, cannes 2021 video #5: bergman island, flag day, stillwater.

RogerEbert.com publisher Chaz Ebert's fifth video dispatch from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, directed and edited by Scott Dummler of Mint Media Works, includes commentary on "Bergman Island," "Flag Day," and "Stillwater," starring Matt Damon , as well as a press conference with Sean Penn . The video transcript is included along with the embedded footage below...

We’ve talked a lot about how different the Cannes film festival is this year, but many aspects of Cannes remain delightfully the same….c hildren playing at the beach, the carousels, Bocce ball games…and this year, our home away from home, the Hotel Splendid celebrated its 150th anniversary. I was so pleased to help celebrate the occasion with the owners: sister and brother Madame Chantal Cagnat and Patrick Cagnat, the manager Monsieur Gerard Pisano, and the staff of the hotel. It was a lovely event to honor a place that’s been very special to my late husband Roger and myself. And they have rededicated the Roger Ebert suite at the hotel, so how can I stay anywhere else? 

The Festival has screened a number of films in Competition contending for the Palme d’Or, and while all had merit, at this point I can't say that one stands out as the Palme winner. Today I saw "Bergman Island", directed by  Mia Hansen-Løve and starring Tim Roth , Vicky Krieps (from " Phantom Thread ") and Mia Wasikowska . 

The story takes place on Faro island where Ingmar Bergman made a number of his films including " Through a Glass Darkly ," and " Scenes from a Marriage " (which has the reputation for causing more divorces.) It revolves around a couple who take a short residence on the island to lecture and write their books and screenplays while staying in one of Bergman’s cottages. Tim Roth is the filmmaker, and his screenwriter wife's new book is filmed as a story within the story. It is indeed interesting to pull the curtains back on the landscape where Bergman  expressed his depressions and anxieties through his films. And it reminded me of the many tales Roger had about being on the set of Bergman's films in Sweden, or interviewing him or Liv Ullman on Faro island. It has a deliberate pace, and some angst, much like a Bergman film.

Sean Penn is back in Cannes with his latest directorial effort, "Flag Day." Penn plays a small-time grifter in the 1970s who has trouble staying out of jail, staying out of debt, and keeping his family together. The real star turn is from Dylan Penn, Sean Penn’s real life daughter who plays his daughter in the film. She’s the protagonist in this story, based on a book by Jennifer Vogel.  She shows a lot of range in dealing with dangerous, family drama at some times and reflective, quiet periods at other times.  The cinematography by Danny Moder is also a standout, giving an authentic look and feel to this 1970s period piece. The reviews have been mixed, but at this point in my life I am more impressed with Sean Penn's real life empathy in working to alleviate the suffering of others through his CORE organization which mobilized early on during the Coronavirus Pandemic to provide COVID tests to underserved communities in cities in the United States, including Chicago and Los Angeles, at a time when local governments were having a difficult time organizing them. He also fed people who were faced with hunger during those difficult times. 

Matt Damon has come to Cannes with "Stillwater" from director Tom McCarthy , screening out of competition. It is loosely inspired by the Amanda Knox case of the American college student who was imprisoned in Italy for killing her roommate. But McCarthy chose to have his protagonist (played by a grown-up Abigail Breslin of " Little Miss Sunshine ") imprisoned in Marseilles with Damon as her ne'er-do-well father coming from working on the oil rigs in Oklahoma to try to free her from prison. It starts as a fish out of water tale, but the longer he stays in France, the more he feels at home - especially with a local woman who befriends him, played by Camille Cottin , and her daughter, played nicely by Lilou Siauvaud. 

This didn't seem like a usual Cannes film, but McCarthy elevates it into more than the cowboy American busting his daughter out of prison. He carefully layers in the growth of Matt Damon’s character until by the end when he goes back home to the U.S. and he says nothing seems the same anymore. 

Speaking of American films, the American Pavilion that’s been a fixture in Cannes for over 30 years, and features the Roger Ebert conference center, is sadly not at the Festival this year.  It’s been a difficult year for many organizations, but Julie Sisk, founder of the Pavilion in 1989, still has a presence here and is mentoring 70 film students from all over the U.S. No doubt, the American Pavilion will be back and better than ever next year.

That’s it for now, but some of the biggest films of the Festival are coming up, including "The French Dispatch" from Wes Anderson , and "JFK Revisited" from Oliver Stone . So be sure to check in at  RogerEbert.com/festivals  for daily reports by Ben Kenigsberg and the rest of our team along with our regular video reports. Until then, we’ll look for you on the Croisette!

Chaz is the CEO of several Ebert enterprises, including the President of The Ebert Company Ltd, and of Ebert Digital LLC, Publisher of RogerEbert.com, President of Ebert Productions and Chairman of the Board of The Roger and Chaz Ebert Foundation, and Co-Founder and Producer of Ebertfest, the film festival now in its 24th year.

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Matt damon in tom mccarthy’s ‘stillwater’: film review | cannes 2021.

The star plays an Oklahoma oil worker who travels to Marseille to help Abigail Breslin as his imprisoned daughter in this cross-cultural drama.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Tom McCarthy cites Mediterranean noirs as the inspiration for Stillwater , but there’s little of that mystique in this uneven ‘90s throwback, despite the mostly untapped potential of its atmospheric setting in the French port city of Marseille. Matt Damon gives a solid performance as an unemployed Oklahoma oil rig worker with a messy past, determined to do right by the daughter stuck in prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit. But that story is clunky, old-fashioned and predictable when it’s not implausible. In any case, it’s less involving than the shot at renewal the failed family man gets with a French single mother.

The latter role, Virginie, is played by Call My Agent! lead Camile Cottin in a quietly luminous performance, juggling French and English dialogue with the same relaxed warmth. As Damon’s Bill Baker grows closer to Virginie and her 9-year-old daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud, a charming natural), this reticent man who wears his disappointment like a heavy overcoat slowly opens up to the possibilities of a life he had thought off-limits. That thread taps into the same kind of sensitively observed cross-cultural connections McCarthy explored in The Visitor , which, along with The Station Agent , remains his most accomplished work as director — regardless of that best picture Oscar for Spotlight .

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Release date : Friday, July 30 Venue : Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition) Cast : Matt Damon, Abigail Breslin, Camille Cottin, Lilou Siauvaud, Idir Azougli, Deanna Dunagan, Anne Le Ny, Moussa Maaskri, Naidra Ayadi, Nassiriat Mohamed, Mahia Zrouki Director : Tom McCarthy Screenwriters : Tom McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré

Unfortunately, the A plot keeps dragging the movie down. Following its out of competition premiere in Cannes , this late July Focus release looks likely to make only a brief theatrical detour en route to streaming platforms.

Scripted by McCarthy and Marcus Hinchey with French writers Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré, best known for their collaborations with Jacques Audiard, the screenplay’s earliest draft is from a decade ago and it does indeed play like something that’s been gathering dust in a drawer. There are allusions to current-day red-state America in the blinkered worldview that is part of Bill’s baggage, but that contemporary veneer is undernourished and the story’s political teeth have no bite.

Bill’s daughter Allison ( Abigail Breslin ) is five years into a nine-year sentence for the murder of Lina, the French Arab girlfriend she met while attending college in Marseille. Allison’s mother committed suicide for reasons never revealed, and the declining health of the maternal grandmother who raised her (Deanna Dunagan) means she can no longer travel. So Bill flies to Marseille as often as he can, delivering supplies, picking up her laundry and praying for Allison even though her affection for him seems muted. He was a screw-up before going into recovery for alcohol and drugs, but we only ever get generic hints about the reasons for her coolness toward him.

When Allison learns new information about Lina’s murder, implicating a young man named Akim from the projects, she asks her dad to deliver a letter to her lawyer Leparq (Anne Le Ny), requesting that she have the case reopened. But Leparq declines, pointing out that hearsay is not considered evidence. So while Bill keeps this from Allison, he makes it his mission to find Akim and prove his worth to his daughter. This despite her having made clear in her letter to the lawyer that she considers her father incapable and untrustworthy.

The language barrier and a lack of understanding of how the different social strata of Marseille work make his task a difficult one. But he gets help when he strikes up a friendship with theater actress Virginie, who has a habit of adopting causes.

Unfurling over a sluggish two hours plus, Stillwater is least convincing when McCarthy attempts to build suspense, with most of that work being done by Mychael Danna’s score. The late plot twists become almost risible, once Akim (Idir Azougli) enters the picture.

Part of the problem also is that there’s never much reason to invest in Allison, despite the heavy burden Bill clearly carries. Her case was big news at the time, and in a town where poverty and race draw sharp dividing lines, the sentiment of neither public nor press was much in favor of “the American lesbian.” Breslin has a few tender moments when she gets reacquainted with her father and his new adoptive family during a day release. But mostly, Allison remains remote as a character, especially when she blurts out heavy-handed lines like, “Life is brutal.” The fact that she might not be entirely blameless in Lina’s death should make her more interesting, not less.

Considering that Bidegain was a co-writer on Audiard’s great prison drama A Prophet , an enthralling representation of Muslim identity in a French microcosm, the race elements here are fairly basic. Liberal-minded Virginie bristles at the indiscriminate urge of many to put another Arab kid behind bars as they get closer to tracking down Akim, while for Bill, that kind of kneejerk racism is so familiar he barely notices it.

But those differences are also what makes the gradual transition from friendship to romance of Bill and Virginie so disarming. He’s a religious man who literally wears his patriotism on his sleeve in a bald eagle tattoo. He’s also the owner of not one but two guns, the idea of which Virginie finds incomprehensible. In one amusing scene, while her friend Nedjma (Naidra Ayadi) is helping them with some Instagram detective work, she asks Bill if he voted for Trump. He says only that he didn’t vote because of his arrest record.

Damon finds understated humor in this uncultured man who is nudged for the first time in his life to see himself — and by extension Allison — as the outsiders, the way the rest of the world sees Americans. A telling moment in an early scene finds him in the back of a van with a tornado cleanup crew chattering away in Spanish, while he sits in absent silence. His time in Marseille shows in subtle ways that he’s learning to see beyond otherness, and Damon never overplays that softening of Bill’s closed-off views.

The actor’s many scenes with young Siauvaud are quite lovely, avoiding cutesiness while gently showing Bill’s pleasure in getting to experience the kind of bonding he skipped with his own daughter. His awkward comments when Virginie invites him to watch a rehearsal of a play she’s doing show how completely he’s outside his comfort zone. (“What am I gonna do in a fuckin’ theater?” he asks Allison earlier, with blunt self-awareness.) But the melting of the distance between them is so well played by Damon and Cottin you keep wishing this was their story. A gorgeous interlude in which they dance to Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” with Maya demanding to get in on the act, further cements that desire.

Bill may have stayed on in Marseille to remain in Allison’s life even after her rejection. But it’s the different version of himself he discovers there that provides the often clumsy Stillwater with some grace and heart.

Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition) Cast: Matt Damon, Abigail Breslin, Camille Cottin, Lilou Siauvaud, Idir Azougli, Deanna Dunagan, Anne Le Ny, Moussa Maaskri, Naidra Ayadi, Nassiriat Mohamed, Mahia Zrouki Production companies: Participant, DreamWorks Pictures, Slow Pony, Anonymous Content, in association with 3Dot Productions, Supernatural Pictures Distribution: Focus Features Director: Tom McCarthy Screenwriters: Tom McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré Producers: Steve Golin, Tom McCarthy, Jonathan King, Liza Chasin Executive producers: Jeff Skoll, David Linde, Robert Kessel, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda, Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré Director of photography: Masanobu Takayanagi Production designer: Philip Messina Costume designer: Karen Muller Serreau Music: Mychael Danna Editor: Tom McArdle Casting: Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee, Anne Fremiot

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Stillwater review: Matt Damon is a dad unmoored in atmospheric drama

By the trailer alone, Stillwater sells itself as fairly conventional kind of thriller: a recasting of the real-life Amanda Knox story, told through a lens of righteous parental vengeance. And in its lesser moments Tom McCarthy 's drama does lean toward a sort of Liam Neeson implausibility. At its best though, it's much quieter and more unsettling than that — the slow-churn character study of a man ( Matt Damon ) who is arguably more lost than the incarcerated daughter ( Abigail Breslin ) he's so desperate to free will ever be.

Damon neatly disappears into the role of Bill Baker, a marginally employed Oklahoma oil rigger in stiff Wranglers and wraparound shades. He's the kind of guy whose thousand-yard squint and flying-eagle tattoos look like they were earned the hard way, but he also won't sit down to a sandwich without bowing his head for a proper blessing first. And nearly all the money he makes from his itinerant work goes directly towards trips to France — the same long-haul flight path through Atlanta, Frankfurt, then finally Marseille — to visit Breslin's Allison, a onetime exchange student now more than halfway into a nine-year prison sentence for killing her lover there.

That the victim was a girl and what Bill calls an "Arab" helped make the case an international sensation; inevitably, the headlines have faded, but his hope of rooting out miracles in a byzantine foreign legal system remains. Whatever the allure of a city like Marseille — cobbled streets and seaside cliffs, the eternal siren song of French pastries — he moves through it in a blinkered bubble, checking into the same drab Best Western and taking home his lonely foot-long dinners from a nearby Subway.

A chance encounter with a bohemian single mother named Virginie ( Call My Agent 's Camille Cottin ) and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvad) offers the first inkling of real human interaction he seems to have had outside his brief and only marginally welcome visits to Allison. (He was not, it is heavily implied, a prime candidate for father of the year before her imprisonment.) Virginie turns out to be a godsend when it comes to navigating the intricacies of a country whose customs and language he can't begin to understand, though it's never entirely clear why such a lovely woman would do so much for a gruff and largely charmless stranger — "Refugees, zero waste… He's your new cause," a friend says to her, bemused — except for the fact that he is, you know, Matt Damon.

McCarthy, an Oscar-winning writer-director whose films include Spotlight and The Station Agent , generally crafts the kind of lived-in adult dramas whose unshowy intelligence belies the need for narrative shock and awe. So it's jarring when his script takes a soapier turn, swerving abruptly into not-without-my-daughter Neeson territory and away from the more patient, almost languid onion-peeling of its setup. Damon and Cottin sell the tone shift better than they should, and Breslin brings an itchy urgency to Allison — who even in her too-brief scenes manages to register not merely as a cipher or a victim of circumstance but a flawed, furious girl with her own hopes and agendas.

A lot will probably be made of Damon's foray into MAGA-Daddy drag, and it's a testament to his tightly coiled performance that Bill comes off as nuanced and sympathetic as he does: Though the intrinsic likability that makes him a movie star may be doing half the heavy lifting, you want to invest in this blunt, difficult man. McCarthy also embeds him so deeply in the daily rhythms of Marseille — the back alleys, grubby kebab shops, and sudden dazzling flashes of sun-dappled Gallic scenery — that the movie becomes a kind of immersive travelogue too. The unhurried rhythms of those scenes feel like their own reward, more compelling and true to life than any notion of third-act reveals or tidy cinematic endings. Grade: B

Related content:

• Matt Damon on the surprising life lessons he learned shadowing roughnecks for Stillwater
• Camille Cottin on Stillwater , House of Gucci , and coming to terms with international fame
• Matt Damon is an Oklahoma roughneck out to save his daughter in Stillwater first look

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Review: 'Stillwater' a deeply personal human drama disguised as a crime thriller

Matt Damon delivers an indelible, implosive performance in “Stillwater,” a deeply personal human drama disguised as a crime thriller.

The film opens in theaters this week after receiving a five-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival that brought the actor to tears.

Now 50, Damon sets aside the boyish charm that made him a star in 1997’s ”Good Will Hunting” (he and pal Ben Affleck won an Oscar for their script) and such blockbusters as the “Ocean’s” franchise, the Jason Bourne trilogy and his Golden Globe winning “The Martian.”

As Bill Baker, a widowed oil-rigger and ex-con from Stillwater, Oklahoma, Damon is barely recognizable. Thickly muscled under a beat-up cap, with a goatee and a clenched, “yes ma’am” politeness, this good ol' boy hides an intensity that makes him look coiled to spring.

Bill is a fish out of water in Marseille, the French port where this red-stater who didn’t vote for Trump only because a felony conviction forbade it, has come to visit his daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin), five years into a nine-year sentence for a crime she says she did not commit.

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Portrayed in the media as “that evil American lesbian” who murdered her French-Arab girlfriend, Allison keeps hitting legal obstacles she doesn’t trust the father who neglected her to surmount. It’s a plot that recalls the case of Amanda Knox, the American exchange student who spent four years in an Italian prison before being exonerated for the murder of her roommate.

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That “Stillwater” doesn’t degenerate into exploitative, true-crime trash is due to the artistry of director and co-writer Tom McCarthy, whose 2015 “Spotlight” won the Oscar for best picture. McCarthy guides Damon and a superb cast around corners you don’t see coming.

Chief among them is Bill’s touching relationship with single mom Virginie, beautifully played by “Call My Agent” star Camile Cottin. Virginie is a struggling stage actress who rents a room to Bill and helps him negotiate the byzantine French legal system while slowly letting him into the life she shares with her 9-year-old daughter Maya (a lovely Lilou Siauvaud).

With this new chance at love, Bill forms ties he never had with his daughter. In a delicate moment that speaks volumes, this makeshift family dances together to Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

If only. It’s crushing when Allison, who is allowed one day’s leave from prison, meets her father’s adopted family. Mostly sidelined by the script, Breslin seizes this chance to reveal the pain of a young woman whose life is more than question of guilt or innocence.

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The film flirts with absurdity near the end when Bill feeds into the European cliché of an ugly American cowboy out to save the day. Luckily, Damon works hard to show that Bill is something more complex and feeling than a thug who’d quickly revert to violence to track down a suspect, Akim (Idir Azougli), who might clear his daughter.

Allison claims she saw it coming, that she and her father are fated to be forever screwups. But are they? The film is at its riveting best when it doesn’t try to tie up loose ends for this father who carries two guns but prays before every meal. Even when the final scene of this emotional powerhouse fades to black, “Stillwater” is only beginning to haunt your dreams.

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Stillwater Review

06 Aug 2021

Perhaps surprisingly, Stillwater is not a straight-to-streaming film about a killer shark terrorising a sleepy fishing village or a faux rockumentary about Billy Crudup’s band in Almost Famous . Instead, Tom McCarthy ’s first foray into adult filmmaking since the Oscar-winning Spotlight delivers two films for the price of one. It starts as a tough-ish dad-on-a-mission movie, before morphing into a relationship drama and then back again. If it never completely integrates its genre choices, Stillwater is still the kind of mid-budget grown-up movie that Hollywood supposedly doesn’t make anymore. Originally planned for Awards season 2020 — instead it’s bowed at Cannes — it delivers a mostly entertaining, if overlong thriller-drama (thrama?).

The father-possessed aspect sees Matt Damon ’s Bill Baker, an oil driller from Stillwater, Oklahoma (the title has another significance), who crosses the pond to visit his daughter Allison ( Abigail Breslin ) in a Marseille prison. Charged with murdering her girlfriend Lina, Allison has run out of legal options and gives Bill a letter that may represent a way to re-examine the case. When Bill runs up against hardnosed French judges, he takes matters into his own hands, seeking out detectives and DNA tests, talking to witnesses and chasing down suspects. If it sounds like Liam Neeson territory, it’s played on a much more human scale — there are dead ends and realistic fist fights — and the plot points are filtered through the estranged (but not particularly gripping) relationship between Bill and Allison, played out in snatched prison visits.

The whole thing is solidly anchored by Matt Damon.

Bill is helped on his quest by theatre actor Virginie ( Call My Agent! breakout Camille Cottin) and, around halfway through, Stillwater shifts gear. At this point, McCarthy becomes much more interested in Bill finding a new lease of life with Virginie and her eight-year-old daughter, Maya (Lilou Siauvaud). There are interesting dynamics at play here as the God-fearing, gun-loving (a shotgun and a Glock) American tries to find common ground with a liberal French thesp (“What am I going to do in a fucking theatre?” Bill says at one point), Damon, Cottin (excellent) and young Siauvaud creating a warm, inviting chemistry that makes the potentially convenient relationship convincing.

Co-screenwriter Thomas Bidegain is a frequent collaborator of Jacques Audiard and Stillwater tries but doesn’t always succeed in channelling the French filmmaker’s mixture of character study and genre licks — the concentration on family drama dissipates the momentum of the investigation, and some of the thriller tropes feel a contrivance amidst well-observed, intimate moments. Still, McCarthy’s filmmaking is confident, the Marseille setting feels fresh, and the end goes to a different, interesting place. The whole thing is solidly anchored by Damon, who is believable as a taciturn man, dealing with regret over his existing relationships while tentatively forming new ones, discovering tenderness and a different way of living. Amidst the procedures and the punch-ups, he makes Stillwater worthwhile.

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Matt Damon Makes For an Excellent Unlovable American in Stillwater

Bill Baker, the Oklahoma oil-rig roughneck abroad played by an excellent Matt Damon in Stillwater , is not a Trump voter, but you can understand why one of the women he meets in Marseilles asks him about it outright. It’s not just that he looks like a guy who might have voted for Trump, from his frustrated outburst about “fake news” and insistence of saying grace over every meal down to the particular style of wraparound sunglasses he favors. He embodies a certain instinctive obstinance, a habit of holding on to what he knows and only what he knows, no matter how much the world might change around him. While the people Bill meets in France tend to react as though they’re anticipating an ugly American, the truth is that Bill isn’t the kind of guy who’d go there at all, given a choice. He’s in Marseilles to see his daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin), who’s in prison for killing her girlfriend, Lina, while there as an exchange student. It’s a crime she insists she’s innocent of, and, five years into her sentence, she’s come across a tenuous new lead she asks her father to pass along to her lawyer, though he ends up taking up the investigation himself.

Stillwater is the new movie from director Tom McCarthy, and it feels like one he’s spent his career preparing for — an enthralling, exasperating, and, above all else, ambitious affair that doesn’t soften or demand sympathy for its difficult main character but does insist on according him his full humanity. McCarthy is best known for 2015’s Spotlight , which won Best Picture, but most of his work as a director has been devoted to the idea of battling back first impressions to get at the complexity of individuals. Each of his early indies — The Station Agent , The Visitor , and Win Win — use a premise of almost-perverse hokiness as the basis for a subdued character study of enormous generosity. Stillwater is a sprawling realization of that same approach, teasing a tawdry international crime thriller and then offering, instead, a portrait of a man trying to make up for past regrets with one big swing and constantly frustrated by his inability to meet the standards he’s set for himself. Bill spends a good part of Stillwater looking for redemption, but the film is more interested in the idea of learning to live with your mistakes.

Bill’s relationship with Allison has been shaped by those mistakes, and we come to understand that she counts on him as her point of contact with the outside world without really trusting him. McCarthy started off as an actor, and he has a way of writing for great performances that seems counterintuitive at first because his movies are so averse to grandstanding or big monologues. But he approaches his characters like they’re iceberg tips, the bulk of their lives a submerged but solid presence that can be sensed, even if it’s mostly unseen. Details about Allison’s childhood and Bill’s drug- and drink-fueled absenteeism emerge slowly from both of them, and it’s clear that while Bill’s been showing up for her regularly, Allison wouldn’t be surprised if he stopped at any moment. He still thinks of a relationship as something that can be fixed rather than something that’s nurtured and maintained, and his eagerness to clear his daughter’s name (while lying to her about her attorney’s inaction) speaks to preference for the cleanness of action. For a while, his determination is effective, and Damon is particularly deft at showing how Bill’s doggedness works without giving the character’s efforts any fish-out-of-water cutesiness.

His blunt-force approach carries him forward until it doesn’t, and when Bill’s amateur detective work stalls out, the film takes a startling turn toward the domestic by way of Virginie ( Call My Agent! ’s Camille Cottin), a Parisian transplant who starts giving Bill translation help, and her ebullient daughter, Maya (the wonderful Lilou Siauvaud). Virginie is part of the local theater scene and has a touch of kamikaze do-gooderism that leads her to open her home to a relative stranger. Her Gallic bohemianism neither overlaps with nor lines up in opposition to Bill’s blue-collar stolidity. It’s her friend who asks if Bill voted for Trump and who’s briefly stymied by his response that he didn’t vote at all because his criminal record forbids it. If it’s never clear how much of a willing enlistee Bill is in his country’s ongoing culture war, the film is also aware of the fact that those schisms don’t export neatly. Bill, still scarred from the way Allison’s crime inflamed press attention because her lover was Arab and female, has no idea what to make of the way that a professor at her school casts her as a privileged American dating a poor girl from the inner city. But Allison didn’t grow up with money, Bill protests, and the man avers that she was nevertheless the one with power in the relationship and that “there is a lot of resentment toward the educational elite.”

Allison wanted to get far away from her father and from everything she knew, but one of the themes of the movie is that she’s more like Bill than she wants to admit. Stillwater can’t get away from its own origins either in the end, and after a delicate and lovely middle section in which the film liberates itself from any obligations to address the murder as something other than an intractable fact, it surrenders to obligations toward plot again. It’s a development that feels as inevitable as a visa expiring, with everyone having to take up the narrative that’s the ostensible reason the film exists, even if it feels artificial compared to what’s come before. At the start of Stillwater , Bill rides home from a post-storm cleanup job back in Oklahoma, and as two of his colleagues talk in subtitled Spanish, the audience is invited into a conversation Bill doesn’t understand. One man marvels at the fact that the destroyed houses are likely to be rebuilt just as they were. “I don’t think Americans like change,” the other observes, to which the first replies, “I don’t think a tornado cares what Americans think.” It’s a discussion that feels like it could apply to the movie they’re a part of, one that lays waste to expectations but ultimately can’t help but go back to the way things always are.

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‘Stillwater’ Examines Lives in Wreckage, With Matt Damon at the Center

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Matt Damon ’s new movie, Stillwater , opens by building up to a gentle but pointed bit of misdirection, the subtle sort of deviation from our expectations meant to say as much about the audience as it does about the man at the story’s center — something of an running theme for this particular movie. When we first see Bill Baker (Damon), he’s waist-deep in rubble, the recognizable but devastated remains of what used to be someone’s home. Bill is a roughneck from Oklahoma, a state squarely, oft-tragically at the center of that mid-U.S. stretch known as Tornado Alley. His main line of work used to be oil rigs; when that labor dried up and he got laid off, he turned to construction. In the wake of a tornado, construction skills are easy to repurpose for demolition and recovery. So that’s what Bill does. He is, at this stage of his life, a maker of things. 

Yet thanks to that tornado, he’s getting his hands dirty in the remains of utter mess, the wreck of lives painfully unmade — another theme in the making. It’s clear early on that we’re meant to experience the world of this movie through Bill’s eyes, or at the very least firmly at his side. When he’s riding home from the wreckage with some colleagues, at dusk, he overhears them saying, “I don’t think Americans like to change,” and “I don’t think the tornado cares what Americans like.” Only they’re speaking Spanish. If Bill understands it, he doesn’t react to it; Damon’s face gives nothing away. Nor is the man overly emotive soon after, when paying a visit to his mother-in-law, Sharon (Deanna Dunagan), and the pair engage each other in naturalistically terse conversation, talk full of ellipses that we don’t realize are ellipses, because real people don’t speak as if they know strangers are watching — and these, the movie is committed to impressing upon us, are real people.

It’s not long before Bill hops on a plane, seemingly all of a sudden, and lands — in France. In sunny, coastal Marseilles, to be exact, a fact that lands with the force of a punchline, despite there being nothing funny at stake in the particulars of this voyage. It’s early in the movie, and Damon — a more than capable actor, whose physical commitment to his roles is, in contrast to his oft-touted ability to “disappear,” remarkably underrated — has already sold us on Bill as a man who could plausibly be the man that the movie wants us to believe he is. He is a “Yes, ma’am” type of guy with an Okie drawl, eyes often hiding behind his wraparound shades, jeans stiff, cap grimed with years of oil and sweat, and an array of plaid shirts, bulgy with hard-working, middle-age fat and muscle, that tells us there’s little distance between a work uniform and everyday life for this man. He’s in France but does not speak French. When it comes to picking accommodations, he opts for what must feel like a slice of home: a Best Western. He is pronouncedly, unabashedly, though not quite crudely, a so-called red-blooded American. So, a fish out of water — and eventually gasping for breath. Stillwater , which was directed and co-written by Tom McCarthy ( Spotlight ), has been advertised and described as a thriller. But it doesn’t open like one. It opens like this: with a slow accrual of details, in which it’s almost easy to miss Bill noticing what appear to be oil refineries just outside of Marseilles, as if he plans to stay awhile; or the fact that the hotel workers already know Bill’s name, making him less of a stranger in a strange land than, to the French eye, simply a little strange. This is an apt choice for a story in which a sense of being out of place while increasingly desperate, having to rely on others while navigating utterly unfamiliar cultural terrain, is going to matter a great deal; it is, in so many ways, the point of the story. 

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Rather, it’s one point of the story. The other part is the stuff that’s gotten Stillwater in a bit of trouble, earning it the courtesy of being called “a calamitous reworking of [a] notorious murder case.” Bill’s not here for pleasure; he’s here to visit his daughter, Allison ( Abigail Breslin ), who’s in prison for the murder of her French Arabic roommate — a case that bears an undeniable resemblance to the 2007 murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. This is a case that is more commonly associated with the woman wrongfully convicted — twice — of that murder : Amanda Knox , a fellow exchange student from Seattle, who along with her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, despite the fingerprints of the actual murderer, Rudy Guede, being present at the scene. Knox was fully exonerated in 2015. She has, it’s no surprise to hear, heard about Stillwater , heard about the resemblance to her case, and is not pleased . 

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And it’s true: The similarities are more than a matter of mere resemblance. The film in fact started, according to McCarthy , with the Kercher murder and the accused Knox more fully on its mind, until the director, who co-wrote the script, became more interested in the surrounding circumstances. But even Stillwater ’s expansion beyond the 2007 tragedy and its aftermath feels somewhat drawn from Knox’s story, given the film’s focus on the heroics — many of them, in the film’s case, wrongheaded — of the accused Knox’s father was one of her most diligent and vocal advocates throughout her ordeal. Stillwater ’s basic premise is that of a man who, after being slipped a note by his daughter and asked to pass it along to her attorney, feels compelled to save her in light of the system failing her. Allison gets a tip that she wants her attorney to look into: a man, she’s been told, has confessed to a murder that bears striking resemblance to that for which she’s imprisoned. Her attorney, calling the tip hearsay, feels it would be wiser not to give the young woman false hope and advises Bill to perform in kind. Instead, Bill steps in and begins to investigate on his own; he can’t afford the private detective that he’s been recommended. And besides, he has some making up to do with his daughter. Theirs is a strained relationship from the start. So begins much invention on the film’s part.

The complications of Stillwater and, really, the meat and bones of its story, have less to do with the Mercher-Knox story in itself than with these inventions. Suffice it to say that Bill has his reasons for wanting to do right by his daughter at this stage of her life and that, for her, it’s too little, too late. He also needs help navigating the labyrinth of a foreign country in which he does not speak the language, in any sense of the word; the movie doesn’t shy away from making good on the promise of his being wholly, stubbornly out of place. Bill, now having to extend his stay way beyond what he’d planned, falls in with a single mother, Virginie (Camille Cottin), and her daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud), who become his guides, his English teachers, and — well. 

It makes for a satisfying film in some ways, primarily because of Damon, Cottin, and Siauvaud, and the mere curiosity of their playing house — she a French actress whose work in theater is way above Bill’s head, he a hands-on gentle giant with a past, a man who did not vote for Trump (which he’s of course asked), but only because, as a convicted felon, he couldn’t vote at all. No one has to say: But he would have . But much of what fascinates the movie seems to be the fact that he would have, which carries with it all manner of opportunity for presumption and assumption on the part of the audience. The movie knows what it’s doing when it tees these ideas up and gently circumvents them with a sometimes-effective veneer of human complexity. How will Bill respond when a bar owner he questions starts to spout off rampant anti-Arab comments? And when this story begins to boil down to a white American with an Oklahoma drawl hunting down a French Arab twentysomething who’s done wrong by his daughter, what violence is the film pushing us to expect? 

It’d be more openly ridiculous, feel far more manipulative, if not for Damon’s performance, which — despite his Cambridge-born, Harvard dropout roots — is widely appreciated for what people insist on calling his “Everyman” qualities . I’d sooner say that Damon’s magic is in making a certain plainness, a near-anonymity, defiantly charismatic. This is what makes him great in spy movies like The Good Shepherd , where he practically blends into the surrounding furniture of the movie, and what makes the “Where’s Waldo?” suspensions of belief at the heart the Bourne franchise, or the against-the-odds implausibility of The Martian , so effective. Stillwater depends on precisely that matrix of actorly skill and unvarnished likability; Damon’s other magic trick is removing all signs of the strings holding the performance together, like he’s his own CGI wizard, his own best special effect.

What this means for Stillwater : A  movie that’s complicated, moving, and accordingly frustrating. You can feel it trying to paint the most rigorously humane portrait of, not only its hero, but the thorny sidebars of the situation he’s found himself in — the tense racial discomforts, the nauseating swerves into Bill’s bad decisions. McCarthy’s prevailing approach here as in Spotlight , his nonstyle style, its tempered lack of visual flare paired with its heightened attentiveness to Damon’s (and Cottin’s!) centrifugal star power, feels at times like a ruse for obscuring just how carefully modulated, even calculating, it is in its politics. We can’t help but notice that as his daughter speaks freely about the woman whose murder she’s accused of as being her girlfriend, her red-blooded, prayerful, gun-owning father, who deploys the phrase “fake news” despite by and large refusing to discuss politics, doesn’t even wince. It’s on us, the movie seems to say, that we’d assume homophobia of the man. This is the sly power of McCarthy’s style and intentions: Our assumptions become more readily noticeable as, possibly, matters of projection. 

The illusion often works — until it doesn’t. The movie’s assured realism sometimes butts up against moments that feel woefully misguided, mangled in either the script, the editing room, or both — such as its failure to make proper dramatic sense of characters’ feelings in the aftermath of someone’s suicide attempt, or a late choice to save someone’s ass that doesn’t quite add up psychologically or make sense logistically. The movie’s attentive sense of noticing makes its flaws, its leaps in logic, easier to notice. But this seems to matter less to the filmmakers than what the style has to offer the movie in terms of a message; on this front, Stillwater is tellingly consistent. Damon and McCarthy have both spoken at length about the time they spent in Oklahoma, among real-life roughnecks, earning their trust, learning their ways, feeling more confident in the goodness of the world, the nuances in people, thanks to the lessons learned and memories shared. (“It was truly intellectually exciting and engaging,” McCarthy has said, astonished to the point of near-condescension. “I was impressed by them on a lot of levels. Truly impressed by them.”) 

The realism is not incidental and not unsatisfying. But nor is it always as wise as it would seem. In the best case, what Stillwater encourages are genuine instances of reflection, particularly for and about a man in Bill’s shoes. The connections drawn between anti-Arab sentiment in both France and the U.S. are, by brunt of who Bill is, ripe for consideration. To lean too heavily into this subject would be to shatter the illusion of Bill’s ironic complexity — ironic, that is, for the people who’d be prone to writing him off. But the movie is invested in Bill’s complexity to the point of most everyone else, everything else, getting short shrift. A scene of Bill’s bullheaded, indiscreet wandering through what the movie depicts as something like the Marseilles projects, beholden to the familiar codes of snitching and the like that you’d expect of a scene set in the United States, ends in violence — the central point being a reiteration of Bill simply not knowing how to navigate a place such as this, with the undertone being a little less easily overlooked, a bit too slow to question the racial stereotypes piling up by the second. 

It all — all of it, including the slow-building romance — leads up to a climax in which Bill makes a desperate, unwise decision. He risks everything. Ultimately, as in the case of its relationship to the Amanda Knox story, the movie can’t get around the consequences, for everyone else in this tale, of choosing to be so fully tied to Bill, so singularly focused on his desires and regrets and the idiosyncrasies that make him more than a stereotype, that the decision he makes somehow primarily moves us for what it means to his life, his chances, when there’s in fact another person who’s life is stake. A mistake is made; a rash decision is pushed to a devastating conclusion. Devastating for whom, is the question this film can’t quite face with the fullness that the question deserves.

In moments like this, it’s worth stepping back and asking ourselves who the movie is making us care about, why, and at what cost. In Bill’s case, the choices that pile up toward the end make us feel so fully for him that the movie nearly drives off-road into a rut from which it can’t recover. Dramatically, it works: The agitation we feel on his behalf is effective. Only when it ends do we realize what’s being left unsaid, whose life is ultimately rendered far less worthy of our sympathy and attention. This is when the movie shows us, ultimately and unabashedly, what it is — and suffers for its lack of reflection over what it could be. 

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Stillwater Is a Difficult, Curious Film About Havoc Wreaked By Americans Abroad

What a strange thing, to sit in a theater in France and watch an American movie about France. Though, I’m not sure that Stillwater —the new film from Spotlight director Tom McCarthy , which premiered here at Cannes on Thursday—is actually about France. Rather, it concerns the way that Americans, or maybe just America itself, behaves abroad. From one vantage point, Stillwater may just be a sentimental and lurid riff on the infamous Amanda Knox case. But I think McCarthy has something bigger in mind, which he pokes at intriguingly throughout his movie’s considerable sprawl.

Knox became infamous when she was arrested, charged, and convicted for the murder of a fellow university student while studying abroad in Italy. (She was later exonerated and sent home to the States, but conspiracy-theory questions about her guilt or innocence have persisted in the years since.) McCarthy shifts that action to Marseilles and begins long past the trial, when twenty-something Allison ( Abigail Breslin ) has been imprisoned for five years. Her once-estranged ne’er do well father, Bill ( Matt Damon ), regularly travels from rural Oklahoma to visit her. The details of Allison’s specific case are gradually explained to us, a murky night of violence that left Allison’s girlfriend, who was Arab, dead, and a mysterious second suspect in the wind.

Stillwater delves, both directly and indirectly, into the fraught racial politics of contemporary France, as new information in the case leads Bill into a housing project largely home to Black and Arab people pushed into the margins of French society and very often unfairly targeted by police. In these scenes, the film treads dangerously close to a hoary cinematic form: communities of color used as exotic, menacing backdrop for white heroics. I think McCarthy is aware of that, though, and is using a bad, tired structure to turn the commentary back on Bill and Allison—and on their country.

There is a long interruption in the investigation part of the film, as Bill finds himself improbably ensconced with two locals—mom Virgine ( Camille Cottin ) and her young daughter, Maya ( Lilou Slauvaud )—and starts to build a new happy life for himself. This stretch of the film is almost its own movie, a sweet, lo-fi look at family found and chosen. Damon has a winning rapport with Cottin and Slauvaud, who both give bright, winsome performances. How did we end up in this happy place when what we embarked upon was a fictionalized Amanda Knox movie?

That is one of the strange questions at the heart of Stillwater, a novelistic movie that eventually binds its disparate threads and tones into something surprisingly resonant. The sweet lying next to the sinister (and intertwined with it) is the contrast McCarthy is trying for, I think, to lull us into a cozy complacency before reminding us who these people represent, what havoc American intrusion can wreak even when—perhaps especially when—it is claiming good intentions.  

When violence reenters the picture, it’s a plot turn that is, on its face, ridiculous. Which may be the point, a soapy climax meant to echo real calamity, adventurism that is almost absurd in its recklessness. Once the sunniness of the middle section of the film is gone, Stillwater collapses into a bleak conclusion, McCarthy closing his film as bluntly and hauntingly as the Coen brothers ended No Country for Old Men . Stillwater certainly doesn’t compare to that masterpiece, but it still startles, teasing that this whole thing may have been a grand allegory all along.

Damon is a compelling presence throughout, clamming himself up into “yes ma’am” laconicism but still palpably suggesting the storm lurking under Bill’s frayed cap and baseball pitcher’s sunglasses. He never demands our sympathy nor courts our suspicion. It’s an unfussy performance, despite the goatee and Oklahoma twang and good-old-boy roughness. McCarthy is, as ever, good with his actors, helping them find the right measure of restraint and cinematic beam.

The film will be out in the States later this month, where I’d imagine it will be received varyingly. It’s not the dutiful, leering re-creation of a sensational case that some might hope for, and is full of pointy, sometimes discordant ideas and details that make it hard to categorize. It’s rather remarkable that a big Hollywood studio is releasing this difficult, curious film. I hope people give its heady mix of melodrama and political allusion a chance. Because Stillwater does—I have to say it—run deep.

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Stillwater review – a damn effective roughneck drama

A damn effective drama about the struggles accompanying second chances and unshakable reputations.

Tom McCarthy’s latest, Stillwater is a character study about second chances and trying to escape unshakable reputations. The film, named after the town where Oklahoma State University is located, and its football team, is beloved by the locals. It’s one of the first things that Bill (Matt Damon) tells his daughter, Allison ( Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin, unfortunately, miscast here), how good their Cowboys will be this year on a visit to her place near the French Riviera. You may think he would find something else to talk about, but it’s just his way. She is grateful for any company since she is serving a life sentence in a French prison for killing her girlfriend.

The Amanda Knox case heavily influenced Stillwater (so much so, she went to Twitter to speak of her displeasure with the film). It’s remarkably grounded and self-contained. Which, considering McCarthy’s track record of films like Spotlight, The Visitor, and The Station Agent, is hardly a surprise. 

But for a film working from a script of four writers that included McCarthy and writing partner Marcus Hinchey ( Come Sunday ), Thomas Bidegain ( A Prophet ), and Noé Debré ( Racer and the Jailbird ), things could have gotten out of hand quickly. Considering Bidegain’s origin and history with French crime and prison films. He knows the culture and the attitudes involved. This brings a level of authenticity that McCarthy may not have been able to bring to the film. In particular, with a fish out of water story that has Damon’s Bill in the city streets of Marseille .

For most of the film, Damon’s Bill struggles to find anyone to help his daughter. Many have an opinion not of Allison, where, like Knox, most think she is guilty, but about him. He must be a bumbling, big-mouthed, MAGA/Trump-supporting American that the world has come to despise. Well, the joke’s on them. He couldn’t even vote because of his criminal record. That’s what he tells a French woman, Virginie (Allied’s Camille Cottin), and her daughter Maya (Lilous Siauvaud), without shame. They give him a chance to reinvent his life. All while coming to accept his grown daughter’s fate.

The final product is a damn effective roughneck Riveria drama with an all-encompassing performance from Damon. Reportedly McCarthy and Damon spent months talking and studying oil-rig workers in Oklahoma. It is a chameleon-like performance from Damon that comes full circle with Stillwater’s thematically layered script. Its mystery doesn’t drive the filmy. But, it’s a character study that focuses on the struggles accompanying second chances and unshakable reputations. It’s one of, if not Damon’s finest, performance.

Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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‘stillwater’ stars matt damon as a dad crusading to free his daughter.

Anchored by an impressive performance from Matt Damon , “Stillwater” confounds expectations in mostly frustrating ways. Director/co-writer Tom McCarthy (the Oscar-winning “Spotlight” ) has set up a movie about a father determined to help free his daughter, but unlike the usual can-do Americans in this sort of tale, he’s clearly in way over his head.

The story owes an obvious debt to the Amanda Knox case , with Abigail Breslin playing Allison, an American student convicted in the murder of her roommate and lover. Her father, Bill Baker (Damon), visits from Oklahoma to the jail where she’s currently imprisoned in Marseille, pursuing a line of inquiry that might lead to her release.

Still, far from the Hitchcockian everyman who invariably triumphed in such situations (think Jimmy Stewart in “The Man Who Knew Too Much”), Bill has his own troubled background, including substance abuse, and isn’t much of a detective.

Unable to speak the local language, he eventually strikes up a relationship with an actress, Virginie (Camille Cottin, recently seen in “Call My Agent”), forging unlikely ties to her and her young daughter (Lilou Siauvaud), a surrogate for the parental bond that he largely squandered.

The movie thus operates on parallel tracks, with Bill establishing something of a life in Marseille while endeavoring to find a way to exonerate Allison, despite being urged to let it go.

“The last thing you want to give daughter is false hope,” her lawyer tells him, but driven by forces within him – among them a desire to make amends – Bill can’t seem to relinquish the fight.

McCarthy originally drew inspiration from the Knox story, and an early draft of the script sat dormant for several years. In the interim, the world – and America’s place in it – has evolved, adding another element to Bill’s efforts.

Because McCarthy and his collaborators deliver much more of an indie film than a studio product, “Stillwater” (the name of an Oklahoma town) takes unanticipated detours, which proves a mixed blessing. While the film keeps the audience off balance about what really happened, and what will, it drags on nearly two hours and 20 minutes, fostering impatience about reaching the end, and less satisfaction when it finally does.

Give McCarthy credit for building a movie around a flawed protagonist and his search for redemption, and Damon for wholeheartedly sinking himself into a role that avoids the usual heroic cliches.

Ultimately, though, “Stillwater” runs long but doesn’t run particularly deep – or at least, not quite deep enough.

“Stillwater” premieres July 30 in US theaters. It’s rated R.

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‘Stillwater’ Review: A narrative that twists itself into knots

Tom mccarthy’s latest is more conceptually interesting than emotionally satisfying..

What to Watch Verdict

'Stillwater' avoids being a misfire by at least being interesting to parse, but don’t expect its ultimate purpose to resonate emotionally.

✖️ It's a twisty story with a lot on its mind, making it interesting to intellectually pick apart.

✖️ The supporting cast is putting in the work here.

✖️ The act breaks may be intentionally jarring, but they don't serve to keep one emotionally engaged.

✖️ Matt Damon is so restrained that his character can sometimes be impenetrable.

Whatever else can be said about Stillwater , it is not a film lacking in ambition or vision. Oscar-winning writer-director Tom McCarthy ( Spotlight ) and co-writers Marcus Hinchey and Thomas Bidegin have attempted to piece together a compelling piece of personal drama, at first smuggled in under the guise of an investigative procedural, but slowly collapsing inward to explore the intricacies of their protagonist’s motivations, compulsions, and needs. That’s a tall order, and the film succeeds well enough that you can clearly see what is being aimed for, at least in the broad strokes. However, Stillwater is also a film that intellectually engages more than it does emotionally, expecting too much from its audience in terms of patience and empathy.

The film’s trailer only truly showcases the film’s first act, in which Oklahoman Bill (Matt Damon) travels to Marseilles, France to visit his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin), who has been imprisoned for the last five years for the murder of her college girlfriend. On this visit, Allison asks Bill to deliver a letter to her attorney, which states that a professor heard one of his students talking about a guy at a party who boasted about getting away with a similar-sounding murder. When Allison’s attorney (Anne Le Ny) refuses to follow up on this hearsay, Bill launches a makeshift investigation of his own, developing a bond with his hotel neighbor Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her nine-year-old daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud) as he receives Virginie’s assistance as a makeshift interpreter. In doing so, he hopes to not only get his daughter free, but to reignite a relationship that became strained and estranged long before Allison left for Europe.

The biggest issue right out the gate is that Bill is a hard character to read emotionally, which makes him a difficult protagonist to either root for or empathize with. This isn't so much a problem with Damon’s performance, which eventually does get enough of a leash to showcase more than solemnity, anger, and determination, but with how the character is written into the story. Though Breslin, Cottin, and Siauvaud are all delivering excellent performances, they have to do some heavy emotional lifting to make up for how little Damon’s character is allowed to display an internal life, at least throughout the first act. When the story is more procedural and the impetus for the storytelling is to explore the mystery rather than the protagonist, that’s not necessarily a problem, but so much storytelling economy is spent explaining how Bill has a history of being a fuck-up father that later turns in the story are short-changed by our inability to see that origin, either through literal events on screen or implication in Bill’s reactions.

This is why the first act break really throws the narrative pacing for a loop, as the investigation comes to a grinding halt and focus shifts to Bill’s attempts at domestic happiness. This is where Damon is allowed to shine, as Bill’s happiness slowly uncloisters and reveals dimension to a man who is not otherwise keen to show it. There’s a certain cleverness to the reversal, a satisfying acknowledgment that the catharsis of justice might not compare to the emotional stability of being at peace. Yet this act drags on for so long that the lack of plot momentum starts to become glaringly obvious, especially as the more compelling aspects of Allison’s claims of innocence are never allowed to drop entirely from the back of your mind.

This culminates in a third act that once again shifts tone and genre, this time to something that feels more exploitative than what preceded, a shift into melodrama that the film had otherwise restrained itself from. It’s a shockingly nihilistic turn for a film that was leaning so heavily into humanism for the bulk of its runtime, but there is value in that emotional bait and switch. Stillwater ’s climax and coda allow for plenty of literary interpretation about the ability and inability of people to change their ways and the inherent toxicity of certain American values, but at a sometimes tedious two hours and nineteen minutes, Stillwater feels more invested in painstakingly setting up its tragic inevitabilities than exploring what its events mean to the characters living them.

What’s most frustrating is that the individual scenes that comprise this overstuffed clutch of twists and motifs are mostly rather entertaining. Bill slowly coming out of his shell; The threads of Allison’s case coming together and falling apart; Virginie’s magnetic pull to a determined American’s love for his daughter: these all make for some funny, touching, and heartbreaking moments. It’s when taken as a whole that the film feels less substantial, that its compelling set-up and relaxed build-up was in service to some comparatively cheap pessimism when it could have leaned just as hard into its investment in hope and the sense of purpose Bill desperately craves. Stillwater avoids being a misfire by at least being interesting to parse, but don’t expect its ultimate purpose to resonate emotionally; it’s determined to force you to bounce off.

Stillwater opens in theaters on July 30, 2021.

Leigh Monson has been a professional film critic and writer for six years, with bylines at Birth.Movies.Death., SlashFilm and Polygon. Attorney by day, cinephile by night and delicious snack by mid-afternoon, Leigh loves queer cinema and deconstructing genre tropes. If you like insights into recent films and love stupid puns, you can follow them on Twitter.

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Matt Damon portrays Bill Baker, an out-of-work oil rigger, in Tom McCarthy’s new thriller “Stillwater”

“Stillwater” review: Matt Damon’s new indie disappoints

A misdone, midwestern epic in a post-Trump world

By Leila Kohn , Reviews Editor

September 2, 2021

Disclaimer: this article contains spoilers for the film “Stillwater”

“Stillwater” is a fine movie. No, it’s not fine in the way film critic Roger Ebert may have described “The Last Picture Show”; it’s fine in the way your 2nd period class and watching the news from 2010 makes you feel. Fine in the way a bland culture pretends it produces masterpieces. It’s a film about some ideas director Tom McCarthy had: bring humanity to Trump supporters, have Matt Damon play an Oklahoman, make a template video for a Marseilles travel agency and unflinchingly exploit Amanda Knox’s story for publicity.

The cinematography is standard. Lingering shots of sun-filtered beaches, cozy apartments, searing stadiums and decrepit apartment complexes contrast Damon’s stoic walk, Camille Cottin’s dazzling smile and some thoroughly unenjoyable dialogue.

The protagonist of the film, Bill Baker, seems to be an amalgamation of midwestern American clichés. He loves his family, although his stoic facade may mask that fact. Under the camouflage hat and flannel, he’s a ball of searing rage. He eats fast food and uses “Ma’am” after every sentence that comes out of his permanently frozen face.

McCarthy seems fascinated with this idea of a man, so different from the Hollywood or Yale (where McCarthy attended the School of Drama) ideal. While an LA urbanite may struggle to say “Thank you” when the Starbucks barista hands him his cup of coffee, Baker believes a sentence without “Ma’am” or “Sir” isn’t a sentence at all. A Yale man may spend five hours every night pouring over his “Advanced Philosophy of Neo-Political Theory” textbook; Baker’s thirst for knowledge vacated the premise a long time before we meet him. Surly, gruff and a real guy: McCarthy’s fantasy of the American Midwest. This awe continues on throughout the movie, even as Baker increasingly loses his likability and power over the audience.

No matter if this is an accurate portrayal of an Oklahoman oil rigger or not, Baker is not a character you want to spend a long time with, let alone two and a half hours. The mystique of the stoic wears off after the first half hour, and you’re left with a blank face and a hard heart. 

Most of the characters in the film are tropes: the protective, long-suffering grandma, the hard-hearted lawyer, the slimy private eye, the angelic Frenchwoman, Virginie, and her equally angelic daughter, Maya. Virginie, portrayed by a luminous Camille Cottin, is a fantasy: supportive, uplifting and gracious through every blank stare, ignorant remark, or horrible act. Her actions throughout the plot have little to do with her character, and her and Baker’s relationship has almost no chemistry, whether you look at it through the lens of the real world or the movie.

The worst part of the film, however, isn’t Baker himself or the characters at large. The worst part, without a doubt, is the writing. The dialogue is trite and obvious, “Life is brutal” being my favorite example. Scenes with Baker and his daughter Allison, portrayed by Abigail Breslin, will probably put you to sleep: too mundane to be engaging but lacking the nuance or realism that can make humdrum dialogue worthwhile. Breslin is slightly grating, although her and Damon’s portrayal of a father and daughter in crisis (through body language, rather than words) was a highlight of the film. 

Although high points are limited, I will admit that the first portion of “Stillwater” showed promise. The exploration of the life of an out-of-work oil rigger in Oklahoma would’ve been much more interesting if the film had simply stayed in the Midwest. The juxtaposition between the arrogant class of the French and the ignorant respect of Bill was amusing at first, even if after the first hour it lost most of its charm.

The pacing is painfully dull, the camerawork is mundane, and the ultimately uninteresting characters make the two and a half hours feel like four. McCarthy is not Tarantino or Scorsese. The long epic template that the former employed must be wielded by a master. When it is not, you can feel it in your muscles as you long to get up from your seat, better things calling your name.

Trump lurks behind every minute of the film, yet he is only mentioned once. The film is too busy trying to weave a mystery, an exploration of expats and Marseilles and a romance to explore the most interesting and arguably the most important part of the movie: Bill’s rage as it relates to the politics of our times. When it does, its neutral point of view lends Baker the look of the villain, though McCarthy continues to cry out that he is a redeemable, shamanic elder of the oil rigs. 

In a post-Trump world, how do we contend with the characters we do not want to contend with? Baker is by no means an extreme conservative (as far as we know), but he’s certainly not the man Hollywood usually likes to make into a protagonist. And, for that, I believe McCarthy had good intentions. His execution, however, leans towards the obvious and ultimately doesn’t humanize a dehumanized population enough to make this movie’s audience turn their heads. 

What does rise to the top of “Stillwater” is the acting. McCarthy, a former actor himself, allowed for an incredible performance to arise from Damon. However, no one is incredible enough to make flat characters, flailing pacing and an ultimately clichéd plot interesting. “Stillwater,” regardless of how much press it may get for Amanda Knox’s outcries or Damon’s fame, will most likely fade into ignominy, just as the film itself fades from your memory almost as soon as you leave the theater.

How long until 1990?

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Stillwater Reviews

What lifts Stillwater out of the doldrums of mediocrity is the performances of the actors and McCarthy’s admirable determination to steer away from the cliched idea of revenge actioner...

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 26, 2024

The lack of genre identity does not always work in the film's favor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 22, 2024

Stillwater refuses to belittle and judge its characters, and challenges viewers to do the same.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2023

Caught me by surprise with its fascinating journey of redemption, acceptance, & Beauty. Don’t get my wrong the movie evolves in ways I did not expect some for the better & some for the bad.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Stillwater is pure drama that turns into a crime thriller when you least expect it. This is Matt Damon‘s best performance in the last 10 years.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 30, 2023

A damn effective drama about the struggles accompanying second chances and unshakable reputations.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 9, 2022

A classic narrative in the style of later Clint Eastwood, the film focuses on the protagonist's quest and his internal transformation. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 4, 2022

Stillwater is so much more than its simple logline would lead you to believe, blending sentimentality with suspense to create a brutally captivating concoction.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 1, 2022

I prefer McCarthy’s approach which keeps the characters front-and-center, giving them and their relationships room to grow even if it means running a little long.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

The final act turns the heat up a bit, as Bill gets closer and turns to more desperate means. The conclusion will raise some eyebrows, but in the main Stillwater is a solid drama that plays to the crowd effectively.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 3, 2022

As a work of fiction, Stillwater feels near-masterpiece level with Tom McCarthy, Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin giving possibly the best performances of their careers. The movie, however, is undeniably tied to a real-life tragedy and feels manipulative

Full Review | Feb 12, 2022

The movie really keeps you guessing as to the true motives of the characters with its complex plot.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2021

This might be a crime thriller, but thrill it does not. Slow, distracted and unfocused, its narrative makes giant leaps one moment and drags its feet the next.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2021

If we can't take responsibility for our own choices, then there can be no moving forward and your life will become a prison of your own making.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2021

A slow burn that is far longer than it needs to be to get its point across. However, Matt Damon brings a lot of heart to this one, and makes it worth watching.

If tied to the real-life case, it's irresponsible and irredeemable. Separated from these knotty ties to the real world and accepted as a piece of fiction, it's a decent drama that begins strong before eventually losing its bearings and its believability.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2021

Absent the sheen of a noble cause, Stillwater is a frustrating effort without a point.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Oct 23, 2021

There's a dangerous lack of verisimilitude that hangs over the entire film. But McCarthy remains firm in his decision not to offer the usual satisfactions expected of these kind of American films. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2021

Within half an hour its drama loses emotional records and dries up like an oil well in the desert when Matt Damon plays an ordinary hero lost in Marseille. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Sep 10, 2021

Stillwater's sharp emotional claws shred Bill's moral authority and the myth of American exceptionalism. In ways both shocking and right, director Tom McCarthy reinvents the story seemingly in real time.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 2, 2021

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Stillwater review: Tom McCarthy follows Best Picture-winning Spotlight with this empty gesture of a film

Despite being inspired by ‘the amanda knox saga’, the drama doesn’t reckon with the injustice she faced, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Tom McCarthy. Starring: Matt Damon , Camille Cottin and Abigail Breslin. 15, 140 mins.

Director Tom McCarthy has yet to respond to the tweets Amanda Knox posted last week about his film, Stillwater . We don’t know what he thinks of her accusations, laid out in a follow-up piece in The Atlantic , that his film profits off what she terms “my identity, and my trauma, without my consent”. Knox spent almost four years in an Italian prison after being wrongfully convicted of the 2007 murder of a fellow exchange student, Meredith Kercher – despite the fact that the man later found guilty, Rudy Guede, was already in police custody at the time after his bloodstained fingerprints were discovered at the scene. She was finally acquitted in 2015.

Knox may never hear from McCarthy. She’s just one infinitesimal part of Hollywood’s long history of siphoning from real-life pain, and he may not consider himself as having any moral obligation here. After all, he claims Stillwater was only “inspired” by her story. But, crucially, her doppelgänger in the film, Allison (Abigail Breslin) – here, imprisoned in France after being convicted of her girlfriend’s murder – is depicted in a way that seems to indirectly question Knox’s innocence. Art is not journalism. Storytellers deserve a certain amount of freedom to explore the moral and emotional underpinnings of recent history. McCarthy is certainly aware of that – his film Spotlight , which studiously documented the Boston Globe ’s investigation of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2015.

But artists also don’t get to pretend that they live in some bubble where their actions have no material effect on the world. It does matter what Stillwater has to say about Knox – and the cruellest part of it all is that McCarthy comes up empty. Stillwater is an empty gesture of a film. It doesn’t reckon with the injustice Knox faced. Nor does it sympathise with her time behind bars. She doesn’t even get to be the main character. That would be Matt Damon’s Bill Baker, Allison’s father – a completely fictional figure, with none of this family’s details matching up to Knox’s. He turns up looking like a Saturday Night Live skit’s impression of an American trucker, with his goatee and a tattoo of an eagle gripping a skull.

He’s an oil rig worker from Oklahoma who’s touched down in Marseilles to visit Allison in prison. Early on, we watch him as he strides down the hallways of his French Best Western hotel with his French Subway sandwich clenched in his fist. It’s like McCarthy and Damon are trying to goad their audience into laughing at Bill. He stands like a GI Joe doll, his limbs stiff and ready to pulverise any incoming threat. He talks like he’s chewing gravel, in low, monotone bursts. Allison doesn’t even seem to trust her father’s basic competency, since she uses him to pass on a note to her lawyer (Anne Le Ny) which contains information on a potential lead in her case (Idir Azougli’s Akim) and a request not to let her father know anything of it.

When he finds out anyway, Bill decides to hunt down Akim himself, with no real thought of what happens next. Since Bill doesn’t speak a lick of French, he ends up enlisting the help of bleeding-heart liberal Virginie (Camille Cottin, who brings a welcome effortlessness to the role). It’s here that McCarthy attempts to pull the rug from underneath his viewers, as Bill befriends Virginie and her adorable daughter (Lilou Siauvaud) – aha! Bill has layers beyond the blue-collar stereotype. But that won’t be a revelation to anyone who doesn’t possess a blinkered view of the world.

McCarthy, his co-writer Marcus Hinchey, and the two French writers they collaborated with – Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré – all seem to be tunnelling towards some grand statement about the impenetrable cultural divide between France and America. Virginie is a cultured actress; Bill can’t make heads or tails of the play she’s starring in. None of this feels particularly illuminating, and it’s made worse by the way Stillwater flattens and demonises the banlieue (France’s low-income housing projects) as a “no-go area”.

Bill is constantly told that, as an American, he could never possibly grasp the racial tensions in France – it’s a bizarre assertion. It seems Marseilles’s immigrant population, as with Knox herself, are treated as mere casualties in Stillwater ’s grand vision. If only that vision had some substance to it.

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‘Stillwater’ Is a Mess of a Movie Where the Action, Suspense and Ending Utterly Fail

This fictionalized take on the amanda knox saga feels forced and ineffectual, despite the pedigree of its cast and director, writes critic rex reed..

Considering its impeccable credentials, I find myself doubly disappointed in the eagerly awaited but flawed new film Stillwater because (1) I expected so much more from director Tom McCarthy , who won an Oscar for the brilliant, unforgettable Spotlight, (2) it stars the always reliable Matt Damon , and (3) it is intelligent enough that it ought to be better.

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Based on the harrowing story of Amanda Knox , the American student in Italy who was falsely accused and convicted in 2007 of killing her roommate (and later exonerated), Stillwater plays loose with the facts of the case and shifts the narrative focus to the girl’s father. It took Mr. McCarthy and three co-writers to dilute the headlines and distill the scandal into a dull, unwieldy screenplay crowded with irrelevant details. The alleged American killer, who protests her innocence, is now a girl from Stillwater, Oklahoma, named Allison, played by a hugely miscast Abigail Breslin, who has outgrown every whisper of the charm she once displayed in Little Miss Sunshine. But the focus is not on Allison, but on her long-suffering father Bill.

Heavily researched by a rapidly maturing Matt Damon, replete with beer gut and graying hair, Bill Baker is an unemployed oil rig driller with enough problems of his own to fill a dozen soap operas from the American dustbowl: a tattooed roughneck whose wife committed suicide, and a recovering alcoholic and former drug addict who couldn’t vote for Trump because he’s also a convicted felon. He feels things, but as an uneducated, typically compromised American male, he doesn’t show his feelings or articulate them coherently. It’s easy to see why he travels back and forth from Stillwater to Marseille to help his estranged daughter, innocently imprisoned in a French jail for murdering her girlfriend. Or so he thinks.

It takes nearly the length of the film’s runtime for Bill to learn the true details of a case the French authorities refuse to re-open, and in the interim, director McCarthy crowds a huge surfeit of material into a very small plot, while Bill sweats and strains to find the boy who was the only witness to what really happened at the crime scene. Unable to speak French and rejected by everyone to whom he appeals for help, Bill shifts gears and moves to Marseille where he supports himself with random construction jobs and falls in love with Virginie (played by Camille Cottin), a French actress and single mother, and becomes the surrogate dad to her 9-year-old daughter. Along the way Stillwater turns into a domestic drama that begins to feel annoyingly contrived. It’s not a movie in which all of the fragments fit comfortably, and the ending, set back in Oklahoma, is a total disaster.

Stillwater is a structural mess, but to be fair, it has moments of keenly observed honesty, and the actors are fully believable. But its attempts to engage the viewer’s emotions are forced and ineffectual. It would have served the factual material in the Amanda Knox case better if the script had simply told the story as the mystery evolved instead of padding it from a fictional character’s point of view. We occasionally empathize with Bill’s affections for the women around him (he doesn’t like any of the men), because McCarthy says we should, but he provides no evidence of why we should. With little action, no suspense and an ending that fails in every way, Matt Damon is the only thing memorable about Stillwater.

• SEE ALSO : Will Keen On Playing Vladimir Putin On Broadway in ‘Patriots’

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