Stillwater (2021)

August 10, 2021 8:27 PM

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.
posted by DevilsAdvocate (5 comments total)

I was on the fence about seeing this, but was pleasantly surprised. It's less action-oriented and more character-driven than the trailer led me to believe.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:30 PM on August 10, 2021

Apparently, no one associated with this ever contacted the woman whose real story this is very closely based on. She's being interviewed on 1A right now. Needless to say, she's not exactly happy about the liberties they took.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:31 AM on August 11, 2021 [7 favorites]

There's a thread on the blue about it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:12 AM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Have you seen the movie, Thorzdad? I haven't yet, but from what I've read, it really doesn't sound like it's "the story of Amanda Knox". It seems to be about Bill Baker (Damon's character, the dad) and the consequences of him blundering in, thinking he's Liam Neeson in Taken. Just the description in the NYT article made me wonder if they're writing a metaphor for US foreign policy.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:25 PM on August 11, 2021

This has been featured on FreeVee for a while. I wasn’t interested because after seeing the trailer, I thought it would be some Liam Neeson Rescue My Daughter action thriller* and, judging by the Metafilter link above, so did a lot of people. But you know what? It was pretty good. Starts out, Damon’s a roughneck, working clean up after a tornado demolishes the next town over. Interviews for a job on an oil rig, we get his potted work history. Drives back to his very humble home in his pickup and then has a conversation with his (?) mother who’s toting an oxygen tank around, about photos and stuff for his daughter. Pretty low key. Next we see him getting on a plane…for France and gradually understand it’s not his first trip. His college age daughter has been in prison for five years. I still expected a standard “Dad finds evidence that the police overlooked and triumphs in court on appeal” but it wasn’t that either, not exactly. Afterwards, I looked up this movie and turns out it was directed by the same guy who did The Station Agent. If you liked that movie, I think you will like this one.

*not intended as a put down, I like to watch those too, just wasn’t in the mood tonight.

It’s a shame that it was tagged with appropriating Amanda Knox’s life because that’s not really what the movie was about.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:26 PM on February 7