Foxcatcher sees its idiosyncratic true story through many prisms. Slipping between olympic sports drama, deep character study, and moody thriller, it’s an ambitious bet for any filmmaker of any caliber. But director Bennet Miller doesn’t have a straight or a flush, and the longer you hold out hoping he has an ace up his cinematic sleeve, the more prolonged is your disappointment. Telling its true story like a new American fable, rife with the iconography evocative of American exceptionalism, we’re meant to see the trivariate of Mark Schultz, Dave Schultz, and John du Pont, as capitalist parable. Self important to the point of distraction, Foxcatcher lacks the nuance of Moneyball and the gravitas of Capote, superior films that played to Miller’s considerable strengths as a filmmaker. He directs reasonably interesting stories that, in the hands of many other directors, would have played as professionally told true stories without a hint of vision. Miller has vision in spades, and reaching beyond mediocrity is applaudable. But in his third feature, Miller’s line of site is obscured by a film in need of a dafter hand than his.

I had the luxury of entering Foxcatcher not knowing its fateful conclusion, and while many critics feel justified spoiling the climax, I resolutely do not. Yes, anyone curious can do a quick Google search to see why two wrestlers and an eccentric rich dude became headlining scandal in 1996. These events are public record. But not knowing adds to Foxcatcher, and as the film has a nasty handed turn from true sports story to true crime story (all I’ll say), I experienced a bottom-up jolt. Miller directs the film’s final moments with the utmost passivity, contrasting the intense drama with measured restraint. The sinister feel is nothing if not earned, and the film’s well-staged bitter end has a meanness that’s punctuated by going in blind.