‘Win’ or lose

In theaters Friday: Friends with Kids, John Carter, A Thousand Words

New on Blu-ray/DVD: Footloose, Like Crazy, My Week with Marilyn

Cinema is filled with memorable characters whose actions speak much louder than their words. Strong silent types leave an impression. While someone else is yapping, they are doing. They get things done.

2011 was a banner year for this archetype, with Jean Dujardin’s award-winning turn in Oscar champ The Artist as well as Ryan Gosling’s quietly emotive performance in Drive. But the youngest and most surprising less-than-wordy character was played by newcomer Alex Shaffer who portrayed the troubled teen-turned-wrestling-star at the center of the highly effective family drama Win Win.

There is an affable power in the way Shaffer delivers each sparse line with such matter-of-fact panache. Maybe its just because as a teenager I knew so many friends who communicated like that, but his performance as Kyle felt far from wooden, and might even approach a kind of preternatural brilliance.

With an unkempt shag died Eminem blond, Shaffer turns up in the lives of the financially-strapped attorney who has agreed to be Kyle’s grandfather’s ward before dumping the elderly man at a retirement home. With nowhere to go and his mother in rehab, Kyle comes to live with the attorney, played heartfelt and anxiety-stricken by the great Paul Giamatti, and his wife, played by character chameleon Amy Ryan, and their young daughters.

Things turn around when the attorney, who moonlights as the local high school’s wrestling coach, discovers Kyle’s incredible talent on the mat. Kyle enrolls in school, joins the team and begins his march to the state championships and a college scholarship. But the twin storms of Giamatti’s legal wranglings and the arrival of Kyle’s mother arrive to threaten this delicate balance and the boy’s shot at a brighter future.

It’s difficult to see why this film was so roundly ignored last year. It’s a moving, emotional tale involving abandonment, drug addiction and sacrifice that avoids being overly sappy or overly dark and acidic. Its few notes of comedy, thanks largely to Cold Case’s Bobby Cannavale and Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor as the assistant coaches come at just the right time.

The performances are stellar from Giamatti on down the line, and Thomas McCarthy’s direction once again proves the actor-turned-filmmaker behind The Visitor and The Station Agent is one to be reckoned with as a new voice in modern dramatic storytelling.

Win Win goes to the mat for family, doing what’s right for the right reasons, and learning to let go, and it comes away with a victory.