Director Jean-Marc Vallée has made some deeply personal and emotional films — from Dallas Buyers Club to Wild. With Demolition, he explores an emotional breakdown of the highest order. With Jake Gyllenhaal wielding the emotive weaponry — literally and figuratively — prepare for one seriously intense ride through the most tragic of human feelings… grief.
Gyllenhaal is Davis, an investment banker who as the film commences seems oddly detached from his wife as they share a ride into the city for the work day. She is talking to him and he seems completely somewhere else. When their car is struck on the driver’s side, the violent crushing blow takes Davis’ wife to a better place, and leaves him even more distanced from the world around him than previously.
Phil (Chris Cooper) is not only Davis’ boss, but he is the father to Davis’ late departed wife. He is having a crippling time dealing with the loss. The only thing that keeps him from completely falling apart is concern for his son-in-law. Yet, Davis seems as stoic as before, perhaps even more so. In the hospital after the accident, as shown in the Demolition trailer (see below), Davis loses a dollar in a vending machine. He took down the company’s address and started writing a letter to them explaining why he would like his dollar back, and he included all the heartbreaking details of his situation.
Karen (Naomi Watts) is the customer service rep at the company, and she not only starts responding to his letters, but following him in an almost stalker-ish way. The two form the most unique of relationships that play just one part in Davis’ slow spiral of Demolition that is a literal and figurative description of what he will go through over the next 100 minutes of this powerful film.
While Davis begins to take some time away from work, he finds solace in destroying his pristine house, room-by-room. And that’s not all, he also finds himself joining work crews that take down homes that are to be remodeled, all for free… just for the satisfaction of the destruction. Meanwhile, his relationship with Karen is increasing in the most peculiar of way, especially since he seems to be becoming the most opportune/inappropriate father figure to her teenage son, Chris (Judah Lewis).
Demolition wavers in its power as it moves towards its conclusion, but still manages to encapsulate the most interesting looks at one person’s handling of sudden tragedy that we’ve seen on screen in some time. Although the script may fail at points in that closing third, this is a film that shows that Gyllenhaal is truly coming into his own as an actor. He shined in Nightcrawler (we think he deserved an Oscar nod), and he was the best thing about Southpaw and Everest. As a thespian, he is having a renaissance after a period where he flirted with simply being a movie star. He shows a revolutionary range in Demolition and carries the film on his shoulders, as the script requires.
He’s not alone in the acting awesomeness of this film. Watts paints a complicated picture of a single mom, who herself is confused as to how she is supposed to feel at this point in her life. And Cooper continues to show why he may be one of our most underutilized actors in the entire business. The performer has an Oscar, and why he doesn’t get more powerful roles like what he is given in Demolition is a crime of the highest order.
There must have been something that Vallée saw in the Demolition script that he wanted to make it his follow-up to two powerful films. Perhaps with a little work to the third act, it would be a film that hit you over the head with an emotive hammer. Instead, it just crawls towards its end. But one thing is for sure, the helmer gets the best out of his actors. He brought his Dallas Buyers Club stars Oscars (Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey) and with what he shows us in Demolition, with the right film, those two are merely the beginning of those who will score their profession’s highest honor working with Vallée.
Demolition won’t answer all the questions that it raises, and nor should it. It leaves you wondering how each one of us would handle the same situation. Even if we are more emotionally connected than Davis is when horror strikes and breaks apart his life, no one knows for sure how they would respond to such a devastating personal blow. In that vein, the film triumphs. As an emotional powerhouse, it just ever so slightly comes up short.
Grade: B