From the opening scenes when Mitchell Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his wife Julia (Heather Lind) are bickering whilst driving in New York traffic when their car gets suddenly sideswiped killing Julia, we are on edge expecting more trauma at any moment. As Davis goes into a state of shock he has no idea how to re-act and takes his frustration out on a malfunctioning vending machine in the hospital corridor.
Not really knowing what to do the very next day, he turns up for work as a high-flying successful executive in an top investment company owned by his father-in-law (Chris Cooper) who is understandably at home grieving the loss of his only daughter. Davis’s behavior gets more irrational as the days go on, and he ends up penning a complaint letter to the Vending Company about his recent incident and actually ends up pouring out his total life story as well. This provokes a 2 am phone call from Karen (Naomi Watts) from Customer Services who after receiving a couple of letters from Davis has realized that he just needs someone to talk too …. which none of the people in his life have seemed to have worked out. As he just unburdens to her on the phone she gets hooked as he is probably the most honest person she has ever met.
They play cat and mouse with each other before they start a friendship, and when they do Karen’s quirky oddball teenage son Chris (a rather brilliant Judah Lewis) sees a soulmate in Davis as they both seem to encourage each other to be rebellious. In Chris’s case it is to accept his sexuality, but in Davis’s case it is to accept that he feels totally cold and emotionless about his wife’s death, their marriage and the rather shiny superficial life they had created together.
It maybe too late to take apart his marriage and analyse it in detail, but he can at least start pulling apart everything else in his life to see how/why it works. And with the aid of his tool box that’s exactly what he does starting with his fridge. and then breaking up literally everything else he can lay his hands on. He finds it so exhilarating and it soon leads him on to actually wanting to demolish anything he can, including his house. It is all part of his way of not only dealing with his loss, but his refusal to behave like everybody expects of him. However it is soon quite obvious that he is going to destroy so much more than mere objects.
This very unexpected and somewhat unpredictable tale is uncomfortable to watch in part, and there are some twists to the plot that occasionally make the story seem a little too far-fetched. What does however remove any lingering doubts about the movie as a whole is unquestionably the powerhouse presence of an electrifying Gyllenhaal who gives a career best-performance as the magnetic Davis. He is magnificent as the troubled Banker who does these wild and questionable things, and although it is hard at times to sympathize with Davis’s seemingly lack of compassion, we are always in his corner. The interaction between Karen and Davis is touching even though Watts is greatly underused, ad it is however the occasions when Davis is mentoring young Chris that make for the most wonderful scene-stealing moments.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee who again proves he is an actor’s director after his last two movies ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ and ‘Wild’ garnered respectively an Oscar and a Nomination for its stars. Maybe Demolition will result in one for Gyllenhaal too?
