Matt Damon stars as Bill, an unemployed oil-rig roughneck from Stillwater, Oklahoma. His daughter, Allison (played by Abigail Breslin), is currently five years into a nine-year prison sentence in Marseille, France, having been convicted for murdering her roommate and unfaithful lover, Lina. When Bill learns of a new lead that could prove Allison's innocence in the crime, he will stop at nothing to get his daughter out of prison. However, the deeper he digs, the more questions start to arise, and he soon starts to doubt his daughter's innocence.
Stillwater was released on July 30, 2021.
Stillwater provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: More of an Accidental Assassination. Allison hired Akim to evict her roommate, however, due to Allison's poor grasp of the French language, he thought that she was hiring him to kill Lina.
- Armor-Piercing Question: At the very end of the film, Bill asks Allison what happened to the gold Stillwater necklace he gave to her as a gift. This causes Allison to break down and finally admit the truth about what happened to Lina.
- Bittersweet Ending: The ending of this movie borderlines between this and Downer Ending. While Allison is exonerated and released from prison, nothing is ever the same as it was before. When Bill asks Allison about the gold Stillwater necklace that he gave her as a gift, she breaks down and admits that she hired Akim to evict Lina from her house after their breakup, but claims that she did not intend for her to be killed due to Poor Communication Kills. From then on, Allison is forever haunted by the guilt of her former actions, and Bill believes that this eternal burden is enough of a punishment for her. Oh, and Virginie and Maya are gone, and Bill does not recognize a life without them. For Bill, everything in America is different, and nothing will ever be the same to him again. Bill and Allison are just left as grey people in a dying world. And to make matters worse, Akim is still on the loose!
- Fish out of Water: Some of the tension and drama in the film comes from Bill, a roughneck from rural Oklahoma, having to navigate the unfamiliar culture of Marseille, France.
- Karma Houdini: Akim fills this category, as he was the one who killed Lina, getting Allison in jail. But in the end, Akim was never found by the police, and he is still running about.
- Platonic Life-Partners: For quite a while, Virginie and Bill are this. Bill is surprisingly content with this. It gets to the point where Allison is in disbelief about this.
- Poor Communication Kills: Lina ends up being a victim of this. Allison hired Akim to "put her [Lina] Out," as in, get her evicted from her apartment as revenge for cheating on her. However, due to Allison's poor grasp of French, Akim misunderstood what she wanted and thought that Allison had hired him to kill Lina.
- Papa Wolf: Bill will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the murder that got his daughter wrongfully convicted.
- Posthumous Character: Lina. She's dead before the film even starts.
- Revenge: This is why everyone believed Allison was guilty, Lina had been cheating on her, giving her motive to kill her. The truth ends up not being too far off from that. Allison hired Akim to get revenge on Lina, but due to a misunderstanding, he killed her instead of getting her evicted from her apartment.
- Scenery Porn: When Bill is driving Allison back to prison, the shot of the Marseilles shoreline highlights the beauty to the audience. It's also extra-meaningful to the audience because it's easy to see how much Allison is liberated by the scenery porn in-universe.
- Wham Line: When Bill is interrogating Akim over his role in Lina's death. Akim confesses that he did kill Lina... because Allison hired him to do so and that she paid him with the gold Stillwater necklace that Bill had given her as a present before she left for France
