REVIEW:
Stillwater is a Matt Damon movie about a man whose daughter is accused of a crime, overseas, and is locked away. There’s a real life case that this is based on, the Amanda Knox case, which means they probably couldn’t get the rights to the actual real names, but knew the time was right with the public to make this movie and tell this story.
It’s a movie where Damon plays a redneck country boy from Oklahoma, complete with a southern accent, and an angry, tough guy attitude. Now, this is a very different role than anything Damon has ever played before, and he’s pretty great in it. The movie, however, is just okay. It’s very long, and tells the story of Bill (Damon,) trying to solve the case of who the real killer was of his daughter’s roommate.
This means he goes to multiple lawyers and detectives, gets an idea of who the suspect might be, and then tries to find this guy for himself. And all of that is pretty interesting. What’s not interesting is the mid-section of the film, where Bill decides to give up on the case (everyone is telling him to let it go snd just accept it, and so eventually he does.) During this time, the story just focuses on Bill’s time with his daughter (he gets to take day trips with her,) and also his relationship with a mother and a young daughter who live in his building.
The movie is pretty good when it is about the case. The big problem is that it is too long, and also that there’s a solid block of the movie that has nothing to do with the case. It isn’t until Bill spots the suspect at a soccer game, that he gets back into it, and the interesting story picks up again. Had the act about accepting his daughter’s sentence and just living with it been dropped, this would have been a much tighter and more thrilling movie. It’s still pretty good, but could have been better.