In 2007 an American girl, Amanda Knox, was sentenced to prison for killing her roommate when they were on a trip to Italy. Five years later the conviction was overturned and Ms. Knox returned to the USA. Screenwriters of "Stillwater" seem to have based the movie on the true story adding their own twists and turns and that is where the movie has gone wrong as it seems each of the 4 writers, Tom McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain and Noe Debre all had their own stories to tell so the movie is not only bloated and way too long but distracts from whatever 'mystery' there could have been. The climax of whatever happened comes across anti-climatic and after 2 hours an 10 minutes very disappointing.


I have seen most of the near 100 movies Matt Damon has been connected with either as an actor or producer or writer and he doesn't disappoint here as the strong man who beat his alcohol and drug problems, believes in his daughter Allison's innocence and gets to Marseilles as often as he can, eventually moving there. He has no understanding of the French language or how French law works. It is dropped in the conversation that his wife had committed suicide and never delved into, instead giving him a French woman who is into causes and has an 8 year old daughter who he can get close to as he wasn't to Allison when she was young. Abigail Breslin is okay as Allison but her part, as written, doesn't make you feel any sympathy for her, which certainly would help. Lilou Siauvaud is as 'cute as a button' as the 8 year old while Camille Cotton as her mother, to me, was very hard to understand because of her French accent.


I have no idea what purpose Deanna Dunagan serves the film playing Allison's maternal grandmother though the actress certainly gets across that she is too old and sick to travel. Various other actors such as Anne Le Ny as Allison's lawyer are hard to understand as far as their accent or the soundtrack goes.


The direction by Tom McCarthy is too scattered though the director of photography Masanobu Takayanagi offers some beautiful shots of Marseilles in spite of the two time consuming, unnecessary scenes of Damon and/or Breslin swimming just add to the length of the movie.


Streaming has spoiled me with its fast forward and subtitles a definite plus but it was good to see that Matt Damon can still draw the people into a theatre.