Early in Demolition, there’s a short scene that catches your attention. Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is looking at himself in a mirror and crying—the kind of exaggerated crying some less talented actors do, straining their faces because they can't actually cry. Gyllenhaal isn’t one of those bad actors, thankfully, and Davis quickly recovers his composure. Was he practicing? Maybe, especially when you think about how preoccupied he seems with a broken vending machine in the hospital hallway rather than the fact that his wife, Julia (Heather Lind), has died in a car accident. Davis isn't without feeling; he just finds it easier to rely on the kindness of strangers. Take, for example, the letter he writes to the vending machine company—it turns into a confession and offers some insight into his detached reaction to Julia’s death. He struggles to connect with Phil Eastwood (Chris Cooper), Julia's father. As expected, Cooper is excellent, particularly in an emotional speech about how there isn't a word – like ‘orphan’ or ‘widower’—to describe someone who has lost a child. It's almost funny that while we've been appreciating Cooper’s performance, Davis’s thoughts are elsewhere, wondering why the restaurant prices are so high and not paying attention to anything his father-in-law is saying. Meanwhile, the letters he keeps sending to the vending machine company’s customer service department become his main way of expressing himself. In a surprising turn, Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), the company's sole customer service representative, has been moved by Davis’s letters and starts talking to him on the phone. Davis is an interesting character, and Gyllenhaal seems to have drawn inspiration from various sources as well as his own instincts. Davis comes across as a superficial yuppie like Christian Bale in American Psycho—except instead of harming people, he destroys machines without bothering to fix them. At the same time, he goes through an internal change that combines aspects of Kevin Spacey's performance in American Beauty and Ron Livingston’s in Office Space. He also becomes something of an opposite to Gyllenhaal’s character in Moonlight Mile. The movie does lose its way a bit after the first half, with director Jean-Marc Vallée seeming to put it on automatic pilot. Davis and Karen's connection works well when it’s limited to letters and phone calls, but falls apart once they meet face to face. Also, seemingly out of nowhere, Davis is diagnosed with an unusual medical condition that apparently causes “gypsy moths” to eat part of his heart. Really?. Overall, Demolition feels familiar; you'll recognize parts before. While some elements are predictable, the way those familiar pieces are used stands out in a refreshing way, and Gyllenhaal delivers another strong performance.

Source on TMDB