Win Win

Tom McCarthy’s third film is not quite at the level of his previous work, 2003’s touching The Station Agent and 2007’s best picture (at least according to me), The Visitor, but Win Win is an effective comedy-drama about simple human strengths and weaknesses.  The stellar cast creates an authentic family dynamic and McCarthy’s naturalistic writing keeps the film from devolving into melodrama while still posing some very strong moral challenges and questions to be explored.  The thematic concepts and simple story don’t coexist as flawlessly as they did in The Visitor, but that is a very difficult balance to achieve with every film.  This small movie scores big in terms of creating an intelligent, entertaining and human story.