When Wealth Cannot Buy Greatness
The Wrong Kind of Sports Film
People often introduce Foxcatcher as a wrestling movie.
Technically, they're right.
It tells the true story of Olympic gold medalists Mark and Dave Schultz, and their relationship with billionaire John du Pont in the years leading up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
But calling Foxcatcher a sports film is like calling The Godfather a movie about family business.
It is true.
Yet it completely misses the point.
From its opening sequence, Bennett Miller quietly tells us that this story isn't about victory.
It is about control.
The film opens with archival footage of fox hunting.
The image feels strangely elegant, yet deeply unsettling.
Long before John du Pont appears on screen, the title has already become a warning.
A fox hunt is not a competition.
It is an exhibition of power.
The hunted never has a chance.
That same feeling hangs over every scene that follows.
The wrestling matches are real.
The sweat is real.
The physical performances are astonishingly authentic.
Yet none of them are what the film is truly watching.
Instead, the camera lingers on empty rooms, uncomfortable silences, and faces searching desperately for recognition.
Foxcatcher isn't interested in who wins on the mat.
It is interested in the people who have spent their entire lives trying to prove they mattered before they ever stepped onto it.
That is why the film feels less like a sports drama than a psychological thriller.
Not because violence arrives suddenly.
But because loneliness does.
The Man Who Wanted Greatness
John du Pont is one of the most unsettling characters in modern American cinema.
Not because he is loud.
Not because he is violent.
But because he spends almost the entire film pretending to be someone he wishes he were.
He is one of the richest men in America.
He owns an estate large enough to build an Olympic training center from nothing.
He can buy equipment.
He can hire champions.
He can even surround himself with greatness.
But there is one thing he cannot buy.
Respect.
That quiet emptiness defines every scene he enters.
Steve Carell plays du Pont as a man who constantly performs authority instead of possessing it.
He rarely raises his voice.
Instead, he tilts his chin upward, speaks in measured sentences, and waits for others to acknowledge a greatness that never quite exists.
It is an extraordinary performance because almost every emotion is hidden behind stillness.
The more du Pont tries to convince the world that he is a leader, the more obvious his insecurity becomes.
Money has given him influence.
It has never given him identity.
That is why his relationship with Mark Schultz feels so disturbing.
He isn't simply funding an athlete.
He is trying to borrow someone else's achievement.
If Mark wins, perhaps part of that victory belongs to him.
If Mark respects him, perhaps he finally becomes the man he has always imagined.
But greatness cannot be inherited.
It cannot be purchased.
And it certainly cannot be performed.
The tragedy of John du Pont is not that he has too much power.
It is that he mistakes power for worth.
That misunderstanding quietly destroys every relationship around him.
Hunting the Wrong Fox
The title Foxcatcher is more than the name of John du Pont's estate.
It is the key to understanding the entire film.
A fox hunt has never been about survival.
It has always been about status.
Traditionally, it was an aristocratic ritual—an elaborate performance where the wealthy proved they belonged at the top of society.
The fox was never the point.
The spectacle was.
That makes the title painfully ironic.
John du Pont spends his life believing he is the hunter.
The man in control.
The one leading everyone else.
But the film quietly suggests something different.
He is not chasing a fox.
He is chasing significance.
Every Olympic champion he invites,
every speech he gives,
every photograph he stages,
every medal he places beside himself—
they are all attempts to capture something that has always remained just beyond his reach.
Not victory.
Validation.
Mark Schultz becomes part of that illusion.
To du Pont, Mark is no longer simply an athlete.
He becomes proof.
Proof that he matters.
Proof that history will remember him.
Proof that money can create greatness.
But greatness has never worked that way.
It cannot be inherited.
It cannot be purchased.
And it cannot be borrowed from someone else's achievements.
By the end of the film, it becomes painfully clear that John du Pont never understood what he was truly hunting.
The fox was never another person.
It was the version of himself he wished had existed.
And that is why Foxcatcher feels less like the story of a murder,
and more like the story of a man who spent his entire life chasing an identity that could never be caught.
The Weight of Greatness
There is something quietly heartbreaking about the way Foxcatcher ends.
Not because we don't know what happened.
Most people already do.
The tragedy isn't the outcome.
It is realizing that none of it was inevitable.
Mark Schultz wanted recognition.
Dave Schultz wanted to teach.
John du Pont wanted greatness.
Three men walked toward the same dream.
Only one of them misunderstood what that dream actually meant.
Dave never needed to prove who he was.
His greatness lived in the respect of the people around him.
Mark spent most of his life chasing the shadow of his brother, believing that winning another medal might finally allow him to stand on his own.
John du Pont believed admiration could be purchased, inherited, or staged.
The film quietly dismantles every one of those beliefs.
Respect cannot be demanded.
Love cannot be controlled.
Greatness cannot be borrowed.
And power can never replace character.
That is why Foxcatcher remains so haunting.
It isn't about wrestling.
It isn't about murder.
It isn't even about wealth.
It is about three men searching for the same thing—
and only one of them understanding that it was never something another person could give.
Perhaps that is the cruelest truth Bennett Miller leaves us with.
Some people spend their entire lives trying to become important.
Others simply become unforgettable.
John du Pont built one of the greatest wrestling facilities in America.
Dave Schultz built something far rarer.
A life people genuinely respected.
That is the difference between power...
and greatness.
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