Matt Damon seeks justice for his daughter in the… | Little White Lies

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Matt Damon seeks jus­tice for his daugh­ter in the Still­wa­ter trailer

11 May 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two figures, a man and a young boy, standing on stone steps in an urban setting.
Two figures, a man and a young boy, standing on stone steps in an urban setting.
Abi­gail Bres­lin and Camille Cot­tin also star in the lat­est dra­ma from Spot­light direc­tor Tom McCarthy.

Tom McCarthy hasn’t exact­ly had the career arc one might expect from a direc­tor with a Best Pic­ture win under his belt. His jour­nal­ism pro­ce­dur­al Spot­light took the top prize at the Acad­e­my Awards, but instead of fast-track­ing a high-pro­file fol­low-up right away, a few years slipped by before he released the kid­die pic­ture Tim­my Fail­ure: Mis­takes Were Made straight to Dis­ney Plus last year.

This sum­mer will bring a more fit­ting addi­tion to his fil­mog­ra­phy with Still­wa­ter, a crime dra­ma pitched to the grown-ups. Today, the first trail­er sur­faced online, evok­ing Spot­light with the sto­ry of one dri­ven man’s pur­suit of the truth despite resis­tance from the com­mu­ni­ty and slow­ly encroach­ing danger.

Matt Damon leads the cast as an oil rig work­er from the Amer­i­can heart­land, gone to France on a mis­sion: his daugh­ter (Abi­gail Bres­lin) has been accused of mur­der and tossed in the clink. He’s going to secure her free­dom with an inves­ti­ga­tion of his own, regard­less of the cul­tur­al bar­ri­er or the stone-faced oppo­si­tion he faces from the locals.

He finds an ally in an area woman (Camille Cot­tin) who could very well be part of the new life he’s build­ing for him­self, but she isn’t sure she likes the uneth­i­cal extremes this pur­suit of truth is bring­ing out of him. His Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty will be test­ed by the assumed home he finds in Europe, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a lit­tle Mus­lim girl gloms onto him like a sur­ro­gate papa.

The whole thing smacks of the Knox affair, in which Amer­i­can stu­dent abroad Aman­da Knox was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and even­tu­al­ly cleared of the mur­der of a fel­low stu­dent while in Italy, pret­ty much the same predica­ment fac­ing Bres­lin this time around. The real-life basis for this film had a hap­py end­ing; McCarthy’s human­ist impuls­es may spell a sim­i­lar out­come in this instance.

Still­wa­ter open in cin­e­mas in the US on 30 July and the UK on 6 August. 

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