Have you ever coveted attention from a celebrity figure or sports franchise? What drastic measures would you take if you became a focal point of how your sports team performed on the field. Paul Aufiero (Actor Patton Oswalt) is a die-hard Giants fan and his plot to garner attention from his beloved football team’s quarterback sends his life into a complete tailspin. Director/Screenwriter Robert Siegel’s (The Wrestler) Big Fan is a gritty psychological thriller about a man’s dark and disturbing obsession with the NFL Franchise.Siegel creates a misanthropic character who’s numb to almost everything around him except for the New York Giants and their quest for a Super Bowl ring. This chilling drama’s lead character is filled with a psychological pathos similar to Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman or Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle. Aufiero works a dead-end job and lives with his badgering mother in Staten Island, NY. Several of his humoristic calls to a local sports talk radio station enable the audience to eavesdrop into the man’s perverse obsession with the sports franchise and his feverish retorts to a the call-in heckler who denounce his hometown team.
During the film, Aufiero’s life hangs in the balance after a near fatal run-in with one of his celebrity idols. The protagonist’s series of choices made after his life-threatening debacle reveal how chemically imbalanced and convoluted his beliefs are as his life continues to revolve around the Giants.
Big Fan could benefit from tighter editing – several scenes are superfluous to the film’s plot. The movie’s detective subplot could have been shortened or cut altogether. Siegel’s picture is very a solid Indie that will leave you in stunned silenced all the way through the show’s shocking climactic ending.
Grade: B
In select theaters. Rated R.
Posted 9/16/09
