Movie Review: Demolition
Imagine buying a brand new Porsche. It’s beautiful, has a great engine, and makes everyone around you jealous. Now imagine being told you can only drive it in subdivisions. Sure, driving a Porsche is still driving a Porsche, but you’re not using it to its full potential. That’s what it is like watching Jake Gyllenhaal in Demolition. He’s still great and turns in a solid 
performance, but the filmmakers of Demolition don’t give one of the best actors working today a whole lot to work with. They don’t use him to his full potential.
Demolition tells the story of Davis Mitchell, a successful investment banker, who, after losing his wife in a fatal car accident, struggles with the realization that he never loved his wife and decides to deconstruct their marriage. The successful investment banker develops a relationship with a customer service rep of a vending machine company (Naomi Watts) and her son (Judah Lewis), who help him demolish his previous life. If that plot summary sounds scatterbrained, that’s because the film is very scattered.
The first two thirds of the film move at a very deliberate pace with not much happening, which makes the final act of the film all the more frustrating. There are plot points that writer Bryan Sipe and director Jean-Marc Vallee (who also directed the Academy-Award nominated Dallas Buyers Club) lay out throughout the first two acts that do not seem to be going anywhere, and even though they do have payoffs later in the film, they are too clichéd to justify the audience sitting through the slog of the first hour.
To go along with the unevenness of the plot, Demolition also suffers from an incredibly uneven tone. The film tries to balance dramatic themes and dark comedy, and although that certainly works for some films, it does not work here. The main reason it does not work is because the audience is never really forced to care about or relate to Gyllenhaal’s character, instead he just comes off as a smug, rich jerk who never loved his wife. Sipe and Vallee try to throw in some comedy towards the beginning of the film that seems somewhat inappropriate given the fact that Davis’ wife just died. It’s as though the film never cannot decide if it wants to be a serious, thematically rich movie or a dramatic film with some dark comedic elements. It tries to do both, but instead comes off as uneven and uninteresting. There are some nice moments between Davis and the son, and while some of their interactions might cross some lines, their relationship is arguably the best part of the film.
As mentioned before, Gyllenhaal is solid throughout Demolition, and so is the rest of the cast. Watts gives an understated performance as the vending machine rep and struggling mother. She and Gyllenhaal certainly have chemistry, even though the script does not give them a whole lot to do and does not really lead anywhere. Watts’ son in the movie, Judah Lewis, is very good as a troubled son with a nose for mischief. He shares the screen nicely with Gyllenhaal as their relationship evolves throughout the second and third act of the film. Lastly, Chris Cooper does respectable work as a grieving father who has trouble with Davis’ actions.
That is part of the overall issue with Demolition; the whole cast give fine performances in a movie that does next to nothing with them. If only the script was tighter and had a better sense of what it wanted to be, maybe something memorable could have been accomplished here. Instead, Vallee and company settle for a cliché and uneven dark comedy with solid performances.
Scott Davis
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