First Hit: This is a very well done film about redemption.
There are lots of films made about someone redeeming themselves after having a difficult time. Not all of them do it well; this one does.
Here we have a well-crafted storyline that evolves as the character evolves. By slowly revealing the depth of Jack Cunningham’s (Ben Affleck) angst, the audience is interested and wants to know more with each passing frame.
In an early opening scene, we find him in a liquor store buying a box full of beer and hard liquor. It is a holiday, and he’s heading over to his sister’s home. The stop at the store is telling because the store proprietor seems to know him, and the amount he’s purchased is unquestioned.
Cunningham is an alcoholic. He works in construction. After work, he stops by a dive bar where he is well known and makes idle bar talk and jokes with other patrons. On those nights, he’s help home by a fellow customer.
While showering the next morning, he’s got a can of beer in the soap holder, and while the water washes over him, he pounds down another beer before he’s even out of the shower. We see this scene multiple times; it is his habit. We also see him on the job with his ever-present metal coffee mug, which isn’t filled with coffee, but vodka. He drinks on the job.
Jack doesn’t care about much except Angela (Janina Gavankar), his ex-wife, which we discover because he calls and leaves a message on her phone. He also shows enthusiasm when he visits his sister Beth (Michaela Watkins) because he enjoys and appears to love, and care about, her two children.
Outside of these two things, he lives a day to day existence of going to work, going to the bar, and being led home to fall asleep in his clothes. He begins each day with a shower and a beer.
He gets offered a part-time job coaching the local high school team because he was their best player some twenty years prior. Back then, he was so good he was offered a full scholarship to Kansas University but didn’t take it. We learn why, in an intimate conversation with one of his basketball players.
Watching Jack decide to try this coaching job was another great scene. He downs at least two six-packs of beer while holding his phone next to his ear, practicing his speeches as to why he can’t take the coaching job. Outstanding scene.
It’s little scenes like this that make this film work well. Another such scene is Jack’s lunch with Angelea and their subsequent joint attendance to a friend’s son’s birthday party. Powerful scenes that open the door to the story a little bit farther.
The basketball scenes are some of the best I’ve seen shot for a film because they were very realistic to high school basketball. The movie gets it right with the noise of the gym, the anxious players, and the boys' willingness to buy into someone that knows basketball. Jack knows how to motivate them, as he motivates himself into caring about something more than his loss.
Affleck is amazing. His performance, by far, is the best acting by a man this year. Because of his very own public battle with alcohol, he makes this character real. He shows us that we know that he knows what it is like to carry the demons of addiction around. Gavankar is terrific as his former wife, who wants to move on with her life. She shows equanimity in both loving her former husband and reviling his behavior as an alcoholic. Watkins is superb as Cunningham’s sister. Her wistful ways of sharing her wish for her brother to seek help, are spot-on. The boys on the basketball team were outstanding. Brad Ingelsby wrote a dynamic screenplay that takes us on a road of discovery. Gavin O’Connor showed great and deft skills by giving the audience the right amount of information in each new scene to let the audience engage in this story as it unfolds.
Overall: This film shows how a film can be crafted by someone who cares about the story they want to tell.