Defeated by unemployment and the ghosts of the past, Bill Baker, an unemployed oil-rig worker from Stillwater, Oklahoma, is on the ropes. However, convinced of his daughter's innocence, who has already served five long years of a nine-year prison sentence for the murder of her girlfriend, widowed Bill travels to the port city of Marseilles, France, to visit estranged Allison. Now, while confronted with an insurmountable language barrier, cross-cultural differences, and madden... (Full plot summary below)
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Defeated by unemployment and the ghosts of the past, Bill Baker, an unemployed oil-rig worker from Stillwater, Oklahoma, is on the ropes. However, convinced of his daughter's innocence, who has already served five long years of a nine-year prison sentence for the murder of her girlfriend, widowed Bill travels to the port city of Marseilles, France, to visit estranged Allison. Now, while confronted with an insurmountable language barrier, cross-cultural differences, and maddening legal complexity, Baker decides to take matters into his own hands to exonerate his only child after failing to get Allison's case re-opened. But, second chances are hard to come by. Can the sad-eyed father forge new bonds with his long-lost child, and in the process, let the truth shine?
Leave your thoughts about Stillwater.
| San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAudiences will come away feeling like they’ve really been somewhere, that they were moved by the people they met and expanded by the experience. You can’t ask more from a movie. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperEven when the story comes close to flying off the rails, Matt Damon holds steady and commands the screen. |
| ABC NewsPeter TraversAs a blunt-force Oklahoma oil rigger trying to save his daughter jailed in France for murder, Matt Damon gives an indelible, implosive performance in a deeply personal human drama disguised as a crime thriller. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreStillwater is the new movie from director Tom McCarthy, and it feels like one he’s spent his career preparing for — an enthralling, exasperating, and, above all else, ambitious affair that doesn’t soften or demand sympathy for its difficult main character but does insist on according him his full humanity. |
| The AtlanticDavid SimsStillwater is a mainstream work that contradicts preconceived notions, and is all the more fascinating for it. |
| TheWrapBen CrollBracketed by genre on both ends, the middle third of this 140-minute film becomes a gentle tale about a misfit finding in a platonic relationship a kind of second chance in life. In other words, it becomes a certain kind of Tom McCarthy film — and then gets back to the overarching story. |
| The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsIs it possible to stand out and disappear at the same time? Matt Damon makes a convincing case study in Stillwater. |
| The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerIt’s the first time McCarthy has made such prickly use of his talent for summoning audience sympathy, allowing Bill’s regrets about his parental shortcomings to resonate through his every decision. |
| The Associated PressMark KennedyBill is a hard part to pull off, but Damon does, creating a flawed but compassionate character, made doubly hard since he outwardly reveals little emotion. |
| New York PostJohnny OleksinskiWhat director Tom McCarthy’s intriguing film — which is a tad overlong — deftly explores are the cultural barriers that prevent us from achieving basic goals, such as solving a murder, and connecting with people unlike ourselves. The story is a lot more nuanced than France vs. America. |
