Foxcatcher – 5

Another entry on my list of “Based on a true story” makes a bad movie. Characters and events were so extreme that no reasonable screenwriter could have sold them, but the fact that something like this actually happened helped remove the no-one-will-believe-this filter. Steve Carrell’s John DuPont was such a one-dimensional obvious nutcase from the beginning that it wasn’t even interesting to watch him. That USA Wrestling would give him their program, regardless of the money he offered, was just as absurd as the military’s giving him a machine-gun-mounted tank. Presumably, both of these occurred, but that didn’t make them dramatically convincing, or even relevant. Mark Ruffalo stood out by playing a relatively sane person, but again casting him as Channing Tatum’s brother required an imaginative stretch I wasn’t prepared to make.