Big Fan
Director: Robert Siegel
Stars: Patton Oswalt, Michael Rapaport
Classification: STC
Rating: ****

Sports movies, with their scrappy teams that overcome the odds to win the big game, are a dime a dozen. Far more rare are movies about sports fans, people whose devotion to the teams they love often outstrips the actual athletes.

It’s this passionate devotion that drives Big Fan, the directorial debut from Robert Siegel, the man who wrote 2008’s The Wrestler. The film concerns Paul Aufiero, a New York Giants obsessed man in his mid-30s. By day, Paul sleeps late while still living at home with his aging mother. By night he works as a parking garage attendant, and by late night, he pens cutting diatribes aimed at Philadelphia Eagles fans which he reads over the air on a late-night sports call-in show.

The highlight of Paul’s week is game day, when he and life-long friend Sal, played by Kevin Corrigan, watch the games on a television hooked up to a car battery from the stadium’s parking lot.

His life, such as it is, is shattered one night after he is viciously beaten by the team’s star quarterback Quantrell Bishop.

With Bishop subsequently suspended and the team’s playoff fortunes fading, Paul soon finds his allegiances between his team and personal safety at odds with one another.

Big Fan recalls 1970s dramas like The Conversation or Taxi Driver, cynical films driven by unlikeable loners. Oswalt, a comic by trade, delivers a fantastic dramatic performance, balanced by some heartbreakingly hilarious moments.

It’s this humour, no doubt the product of Siegel’s stint as editor of satirical newspaper The Onion, that helps to balance out the film’s dark trip through Paul’s frail psyche. It all culminates in a fantastic scene between Oswalt and Michael Rapaport as Paul’s Eagles loving foil.

With a razor thin budget and no previous directing experience, Siegel has created a dark and gritty film with a surprising sense of fun and self-awareness. With studios spending hundreds of millions of dollars on flashy fantasy retreads, Big Fan manages to be both original yet incredibly relatable.