Demolition | Film review - Jake Gyllenhaal's bereaved banker takes a hammer to grief | Movie Talk | What's on TV

Demolition Naomi Watts Jake Gyllenhaal.jpg

Sideswiped by the loss of his wife, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Wall Street banker takes a sledgehammer to his life in Demolition, smashing up pricey objects with methodical fury as a way of coping with his grief.

Director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) and screenwriter Bryan Sipe are similarly heavy handed, bashing us over the head with symbol and metaphor long after we’ve grasped the point they’re trying to make. We get it. Protagonist Davis Mitchell has to take apart his life of empty privilege before he can put himself together.

Gyllenhaal, though, does a very impressive job as the bereaved broker, overcoming the script’s contrivances to convince us of his character’s emotional journey out of numbness. He gets excellent support, too, from Naomi Watts as the pot-smoking single mother to whom he reaches out and from Judah Lewis, a real find, as her sexually confused teenage son.

Certificate 15. Runtime 101 mins. Director Jean-Marc Vallée

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UnSXelOJo0

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.