Emily Theytaz ’17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer Jake Gyllenhaal in Demolition. Photo Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures.
After his wife Julia is killed in a car accident, investment banker Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) attempts to make sense of his white-collar life by going on a journey of self- discovery… and destruction. In Demolition Mitchell’s coping mechanisms include dismantling appliances, smashing furniture and even going so far as to bulldoze his own house in search of a catharsis that never comes. His obsession with appliance destruction connects him with Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), a customer service clerk at a vending machine company that Davis takes issue with, and her young son Chris (Judah Lewis).
The movie would have been a complete disaster if not for the stellar acting done by the cast. The next step in a seemingly peculiar pattern of playing odd characters, leading man Jake Gyllenhaal brings his A-game for this film. He is impressively committed to his character allowing you to almost forgive the massive amount of plot holes because of it. Gyllenhaal puts you in a trance of emotion even while he is navigating the dull doings of his character. Naomi Watts is wonderful in an infrequent supporting part that allows her to reflect her co-star’s depth without being used as a sexual object. Good child actors are hard to come by, yet Demolition managed to get a good one. Judah Lewis, who plays the longhaired, moody and rebellious teen Chris, is a terrific young newcomer who even upstages several scenes from Gyllenhaal himself. Jake Gyllenhaal in Demolition. Photo Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures.
On the negative side of things, the creative choices are odd, unexpected, and not welcome. The scenes are aimed to provoke a reaction out of the audience and yet, are too obvious and expected, so that when the film tries to throw in a few twists, they’re absurd and clichéd, incited by cheap reveals, like finding old photographs. It’s impossible to care about those twists when they are so poorly executed. Speaking of poor execution, the music choices for this film were a mix of amazingly placed soundtracks such as ‘Sweaty Fingers’ by Cave but also combined with non-tempo matching banal music swells.
Overall, the object of the film is clearly to tear Davis apart and reconstruct him from the ashes of himself, and while the writing attempts to do that, it only comes across through the stellar acting of Gyllenhaal. The result of the film is a muddled storyline with cheap tricks but gave us another fantastic performance by Gyllenhaal.
