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Foxcatcher
The greatest Olympic Wrestling Champion brother team joins Team Foxcatcher led by multimillionaire sponsor John E. du Pont as they train for the 1988 games in Seoul - a union that leads to unlikely circumstances.
2014 · Directed by Bennett Miller · 134 min · Drama · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 17 frames
Tagline
Ambition. Power. Control.
Plot
In 1987 Olympic wrestling champion Mark Schultz speaks at an elementary school in place of his older brother Dave. Both won gold medals at the 1984 Summer Olympics, but Mark feels overshadowed by Dave. Mark is contacted by philanthropist and wrestling enthusiast John E. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont family fortune, who arranges to fly Mark to his estate in Pennsylvania where John has built a private wrestling training facility. John invites Mark to join his wrestling team, Foxcatcher, to be paid to train for the World Championship. Mark accepts the offer, with John urging him to enlist Dave as well. Dave declines, to avoid uprooting his wife and two children, so Mark moves to Pennsylvania alone.
Mark stays in a homey guest house and is greeted there by John. Through training with his new teammates and John's financial support, Mark excels with Foxcatcher, winning gold at the 1987 World Wrestling Championships. John praises him, and they develop a friendship. John introduces Mark to cocaine, which he starts to use regularly. He confides in Mark, whom he now calls a true friend, telling him how his mother Jean du Pont paid a boy to act as his friend. John organizes an over-50 masters wrestling tournament, which he wins after his opponent is paid to lose the final. Jean tells her son that wrestling is a "low sport" and that she does not like seeing him "being low". One day Mark and his teammates take the morning off from training to watch mixed martial arts on television. Angered by this (as well as Mark's bitter refusal to be in his brother's presence in Foxcatcher), John slaps Mark and berates him, saying that he will enlist Dave by any means necessary while also demanding that Mark work out his differences with his brother as soon as possible.
Dave decides to move with his family to Pennsylvania so he can join Foxcatcher. His self-esteem damaged by John, Mark decides to work and train alone, pushing away both John and Dave. As Foxcatcher prepares to enter the preliminaries for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, John's mother is escorted into his gym to watch him coach his team. He awkwardly demonstrates basic maneuvers for her and the other wrestlers. Jean leaves in disgust after seeing him give his back to his student.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman
- Cinematography: Greig Fraser
- Edited by: Stuart Levy, Conor O'Neill, Jay Cassidy
- Music: Rob Simonsen
- Production design: Jess Gonchor
- Produced by: Megan Ellison, Bennett Miller, Anthony Bregman, Jon Kilik
Cast
- Steve Carell as John du Pont
- Channing Tatum as Mark Schultz
- Mark Ruffalo as David Schultz
- Sienna Miller as Nancy Schultz
- Vanessa Redgrave as Jean du Pont
- Anthony Michael Hall as Jack
- Guy Boyd as Henry Beck
- Brett Rice as Fred Cole
- Jackson Frazer as Alexander Schultz
- Samara Lee as Danielle Schultz
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Annapurna Pictures, Likely Story
- Budget: $24,000,000
- Box office: $19,206,513
- Themes: sports, wrestling, biography, based on true story, tragedy, brothers
More by Bennett Miller
On this film
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