Dir: Tom McCarthy Characters/Actors: Mike Flaherty (Paul "Sideways" Giamatti), Jackie (Amy Ryan), Burt "Rocky" Young, Jeffrey Tambor, Bobby Cannavale, Kyle (?), Cindy (?), etc.
In this independent film, Paul Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, an overextended lawyer and part time high school wrestling coach. He is deeply in debt and his wrestling team hasn't won a match all year. Flaherty goes out of his way to put off expensive repairs in his home and office or to do them himself. When one of Flaherty's wealthy, elderly clients (Burt Young) starts to show signs of dementia the lawyer offers to be his client's caretaker. Flaherty gets $1500 per month for his efforts, but instead of following the old man's wishes of keeping him in his home, the lawyer puts Young's character in an Assisted Living facility. Soon afterward Flaherty notices a teenager hanging around Young's character's residence. The teenager is a runaway named Kyle, who is the old man's grandson and the son of a drug addicted mother. Giamatti and his wife (Amy Ryan) reluctantly take the boy in, and it turns out Kyle is a high school wrestling phenom. Before long, Kyle practically becomes part of Flaherty's family, joins the wrestling team, and inspires the wrestling team to start winning matches, that is until the boy's mom returns after getting out of drug rehab. This movie was excellent. Almost as good as "Sideways' and about as good as "Barney's Version" in which Giamatti plays a Canadian businessman and hockey fan who over the course of twenty years marries three very different women.
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