Lawrence carries ambitious ‘Joy’ – Smith anchors worthy ‘Concussion’

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Jennifer Lawrence is a force, whether as the hero of “The Hunger Games” or the overburdened, inventive single mother she plays in “Joy.”

The Oscar winner is in every frame of David O. Russell’s new film, shining even among a star-studded cast with a performance that brings continuity to the writer-director’s ambitious but flawed story about the dogged persistence of a determined entrepreneur.

Lawrence plays the title character, Joy, whose last name is never revealed but who’s based on real-life home-shopping magnate Joy Mangano, creator of the Miracle Mop and an executive producer of the film. Text onscreen at its opening says it is “inspired by true stories of daring women, one in particular.”

Russell’s eighth feature film (and third collaboration with Lawrence) introduces Joy in the years before she makes herself a millionaire. Working in a meaningless job, she struggles as the financial and emotional center of a dysfunctional, multigenerational family. She lives in a crumbling house with her grandmother (Diane Ladd), her soap-opera obsessed mom (Virginia Madsen), along with her two children and her ex-husband, who lives in the basement.

Flashbacks and daydreams show Joy as a bright, imaginative child who reluctantly followed a more conventional path when family responsibilities took hold. But when a flash of inspiration hits after years of life dissatisfaction, she bets her future on it.

With moral support from her grandmother and ex-husband, seed money from her father’s wealthy girlfriend (Isabella Rossellini), and a glimmer of hope from a QVC executive (Bradley Cooper), Joy stakes everything she has on her new invention: a self-wringing mop with a machine-washable head.

Despair

Along the way, she experiences elation and despair, personally and professionally. Lawrence brings all the power and intensity required to portray a devoted mother and fierce businesswoman growing up through her 30s, even if the actress looks sweetly youthful throughout. It’s her fire and range that speaks.

And the 25-year-old star doesn’t take anything away from older actresses, who relish in delicious opportunities of their own. Rossellini, 63, is perfectly cast as an Italian widow, while 80-year-old Ladd glows as a doting grandmother and the film’s narrator. Madsen, 54, melts into her character, a recluse in oversized glasses whose whole world is a TV soap opera starring Susan Lucci.

Lucci, 68, plays a powerful heroine in the fictional soap that’s meant to be analogous to Joy’s journey of self-discovery, but the technique doesn’t really work, especially since the mother’s obsession with the show seems to border on mental illness. Still, it’s great to see Lucci back in her element.

Returning Russell collaborators Robert DeNiro (“Silver Linings Playbook”) and Cooper (“Silver Linings Playbook,” ‘’American Hustle”) each predictably deliver, even if their characters aren’t well-drawn. At one point, Cooper’s sympathetic home-shopping exec tells Joy he’s too busy to hear her pitch, then goes into a lengthy explanation about the history of QVC, which seems oddly expository. The script suffers from further clunkiness when Joy explains her business plans to her 5-year-old daughter (endearingly played by twins Aundrea and Gia Gadsby).

Access

While Russell had unfettered access to Mangano, he says he took liberties with the facts of her story, creating a fictional half-sister (Elisabeth Rohm) to add drama beyond the despondent mom and codependent dad. It’s hard to know what really happened, but it seems like a woman supporting her family while building a multimillion-dollar fortune with nothing more than ingenuity and determination would be dramatic enough.

Despite the convoluted family dynamics and less-than-successful use of the show-within-a-show trope, Lawrence makes Joy easy to believe and easy to root for, no matter what she’s selling.

One of the most impactful scenes in “Concussion” is a brief and wordless one: Just a few seconds, really, of a high school football team going through its drills.

We don’t know who these young, determined, helmeted kids are, but the message is sobering, especially if you’re a parent: Concussion-related brain damage from football is not merely a threat to the professionals featured in the film. It’s a threat to our football-playing kids, too.

And that’s a strong argument for any football lover (or parent of one) to see this film, which is anchored by a sensitive, understated performance by Will Smith as the real-life forensic pathologist who earned the NFL’s animosity for shining a torch on the problem in Pittsburgh, home of the revered Steelers.

The film, directed and written by Peter Landesman, may suffer from an overly simplistic, sometimes sermonizing script that could have used some sharp editing. But it’s to be admired for bringing a truly important issue to the big screen  one we hate to hear about, perhaps, but isn’t going to go away no matter how much we in this football-mad country try to avoid it.

We first get to know Dr Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian immigrant, in the autopsy room, where he has the strange habit of speaking to the corpses he’s cutting into, asking them questions. He wants their help, in deducing how they died. This approach endears him to some colleagues while antagonizing others.

One day, a beloved former Steeler ends up on Omalu’s table: Mike Webster  “Iron Mike”  who died at only 50 after his last years were plagued by dementia. Omalu wonders why a high-level athlete would experience such a rapid deterioration. Ignoring colleagues’ pleas to leave the case alone, Omalu orders testing of Webster’s brain, at his own expense. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he tells his skeptical but supportive boss, Cyril Wecht (a wisecracking Albert Brooks.)

What he discovers is shocking: Webster’s brain has been ravaged, a result of repeated blows over his long career  some 70,000 hits, Omalu estimates. He co-authors an article in a medical journal outlining his findings that Webster and others like him suffer from CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). He thinks the NFL will be glad to know, so it can better help its athletes.

Well, he’s wrong. There’s been some controversy over whether the “Concussion” filmmakers may have deleted scenes to mollify the NFL, but the NFL certainly does not look good here. Rather than welcome Omalu’s findings, the league and its representatives seek to discredit him. Wecht tries to explain this to an oblivious Omalu, who doesn’t watch football (or even turn on the TV): “You’re going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week  the same day the church used to own.”

Or, as former Steeler doctor Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin) tells him: “You gave their biggest boogeyman a name.” Bailes has watched a string of players die under tragic circumstances, including the suicides of Junior Seau in 2012 and Dave Duerson a year earlier. (Duerson’s family, incidentally, has publicly disputed how Duerson is portrayed in the film.) He turns into a crucial ally of Omalu’s.

Much of the credit here goes to Smith: He masters Omalu’s Nigerian accent in a convincing, unshowy manner, and remains hugely watchable throughout. When Omalu goes to a nightclub  not his usual territory  to dance with a new lady friend who will eventually become his wife, Smith makes Omalu’s social shyness believable  for a minute, you forget that this is the hugely charismatic Will Smith. Baldwin is effective, too, though his own accent is uneven. As Omalu’s future wife, the gorgeous Gugu Mbatha-Raw is touching but seriously underused  and saddled with more heavy-handed lines than she deserves.

It is she, though, who points out a deep truth to Omalu that he hasn’t yet seen: Football, she tells him, is a beautiful game. Indeed it is. But it also has a dark, troubling side which many have been loath to acknowledge, and that’s a simple reason that “Concussion” is a worthy enterprise indeed. (AP)

“Concussion,” a Sony Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America “for thematic material including some disturbing images, and language.” Running time: 123 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four. (AP)

By Sandy Cohen and Jocelyn Noveck

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