Stillwater (2021)

Actor turned director Tom McCarthy (The Visitor, The Station Agent) chose to follow his Best Picture winning film Spotlight (2015) with another ripped from the headlines tale, Stillwater (2021). Loosely based on the case of American murder suspect Amanda Knox, the film tells the story of Allison (Abigail Breslin) an American woman imprisoned in Marseille, France for having murdered her college roommate. Her father Bill (Matt Damon) is an oil rig worker who loses his job and decides to move to France to help his daughter mount a defense to clear her name and figure out who really killed his daughter's roommate and former lover. With the help of a sympathetic woman named Virginie (Camille Cottin) who works for France's equivalent of The Innocence Project, Bill is determined to clear his daughter's name and bring her home, all the while attempting to make a life for himself as a red state stranger in a very strange land. As the investigation intensifies, Bill finds himself questioning nearly every piece of new evidence that comes to life, wondering if the evidence is actually pointing in a direction that suggests his daughter may indeed have committed the crime, bringing to the surface the question of whether it's better to know the truth or to take comfort in the lie you've told yourself. Matt Damon beefed up for his role as a country boy in a foreign land and we get a couple of nice looks at his new physique, but sadly he never gives us a look below the belt and never answering the question of whether or not Stillwater runs balls deep!