Directed by: Tom McCarty
Starring: Matt Damon, Abigail Breslin, Camille Cottin
Stillwater is one sweet movie, only- it’s not a movie- it’s a TV miniseries. Definitely.
Its format, how it’s filmed, the production, how the action progresses, it would be a perfect 3 part series. You just need to add about 30 minutes of unnecessary filler scenes and you got it. It would have gotten more of an audience and probably would have made more money.
How it is now- it’s one overextended film with some good dramatic moments and a lot of “running on empty” parts.
Most of the action is located in Marseille, France and a lot of the dialogue is in French so be ready for a lot of subtitles too.
Oklahoma oil-rig roughneck, Bill Baker (played by Matt Damon) is a working class tough guy who claims that he did not vote for Trump (yes, even that is possible but who can you believe) wants to get his daughter out of a French prison. That is his only goal when he crosses the ocean and end up in Marseille.
French bureaucracy does not want to cooperate, so he is doing his own investigation to prove that his daughter is innocent. This is no easy task. He decides to stay in France for a prolonged period of time. He starts to work there, even meets a single mother (she is helping him out with translation). He falls in love with the mother, and starts to love her young daughter as his own.
But life is cruel. He succeeds in finding out who the real killer of his daughter’s girlfriend was but it will cost him a lot. He loses his new family in Marseille.
Bill brings his daughter home and finds out that she orchestrated the murder of the middle eastern girl that she was in love with.
And as in almost every new project of this type of drama, it flirts with everyday hot button political topics like for example- the immigrant camps of Marseille where nobody else wants to even step foot in because it’s too dangerous. Some open questions about racism in the States but also in Europe. Guns in the States (the French people are amazed when Baker tells them that he owns two guns and he is neither a hunter or a cop). And of course at the end of the movie during the welcome home ceremony for the imprisoned daughter local politicians gather in front of the crowd in an attempt to gain political points “They brought the girl back home to America!!” Her father and only her father without the help of anyone else won the fight for her freedom.
The acting in the movie is good. Matt Damon is doing his standard thing; he is always the same whether he is Jason Bourne or a father in search of his daughter. Not a lot of different motions. Walks the same, talks the same.
Go and see this movie, if you watching at home you can skip so many parts of this film. Make your own editing and you will have a much more enjoyable watching experience.
