The du Pont family made its fortune selling gunpowder during the War of 1812, and soldiered on to invent everything ever worn by a cop: Kevlar, nylon, polyester, synthetic rubber. If you've cooked on Teflon pans, that money's theirs, too. That means you've supported American patriotism, or at least heir John Eleuthère du Pont's version of it, funded and fought on wrestling mats at ten world championships and three Olympics. (Naturally, the du Pont labs also developed Lycra spandex.)
John (played here by a ghostly Steve Carell) spent $600,000 of his $200 million fortune to build a wrestling gym at Foxcatcher, his family estate and the name of director Bennett Miller's stone-faced jock drama. He was a lousy wrestler himself: over fifty, scrawny, and with a permanent wedgie. What he was really trying to buy was respect from his mother (Vanessa Redgrave), from the Olympic committee, and from his locker room of grapplers, who dutifully agreed to call him a role model and a coach in exchange for great facilities, free room and board, the occasional ride on du Pont's private plane, and, of course, Foxcatcher-logo sweatshirts that came to look like the brand of a true believer.
Everyone has a price — which makes Foxcatcher a natural followup to Miller's Moneyball, another sports film about dollars, cents and cynicism. The cheapest here is Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), a 1984 gold medalist who, thanks to Olympic eligibility rules, is so broke he has to train for 1988 Seoul on a diet of dry ramen. Schultz's older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) — a smaller but smarter wrestler who can convincingly flip Mark like a pancake — costs more. When Mark warns du Pont, "You can't buy Dave," the millionaire grunts, "Huh?" A man without a price may as well be a black hole — a theory that du Pont has never confirmed firsthand.
As much as du Pont sneers at his mother's show ponies, he, too, sees his investment as simply buying good muscles, housing them in stables and collecting trophies.
Carell is unrecognizable as the lonely tyrant. His eyes seem smaller and more sunken, his nose has doubled to an imperious beak, and his skin is marred with wrinkles and liver spots. He walks in small, mincing steps and speaks in a gray monotone — the voice of a man who's never had to yell to get what he wants. To the world, du Pont looks like a mouse. To himself, he's much greater. Telling Mark he no longer has to call him Mr. du Pont, he warmly suggests, "Eagle, or Golden Eagle."
Meanwhile, Mark looks like a brute but turns out to be as fragile as a little boy. Tatum furrows his brow, juts his jaw, and lumbers around like a playground bully with yardsticks in his pants. He and du Pont look like an odd couple, but their codependence makes sense. They both need someone to believe in their greatness, and for a while they prop each other up. The price — no privacy, little free will, late nights pretending to let du Pont pin him during drunken practices — doesn't seem like much to Mark until, suddenly, it dawns on him that it is. Sometimes Tatum punches his own head as if Mark is trying to turn on his brain. It's an intelligent depiction of a very dumb man, who is no less tragic for being unable to articulate his hopes and hurts.
Foxcatcher feels like that, too, as though Miller has banged the facts around but can't shake out what story he wants to tell. He's mashed the timeline and rejiggered the events so much that the film is several strides away from the truth, which would be more pardonable if he'd done it to shape a theme. The pieces of something important are here — there's ego and greed and desperation, the essential ingredients of the American tragedy — but none of it fits together. Instead, Foxcatcher is merely a very, very good character study with acting so fine, it's frustrating that it's not in the service of a real, emotional wallop.
