Synopsis
The incident is both commonplace and shockingly savage: two kids, about eleven, in a showdown in a local park, one stronger and “armed with a stick,” has injured the other − blood and swollen lips and broken teeth.Now the parents of the “victim”, Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael (John C. Reilly), have invited the parents of the “bully”, Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz), to their apartment on the outer edge of Park Slope, Brooklyn, to sort it out.
Penelope, a forward-thinking woman who is writing a book about the Darfur tragedy, would like to settle the matter in a civilized manner, without acrimony. Michael, who sells bathroom fixtures, Nancy, the seemingly demure financial advisor, and Alan, a busy lawyer whose cell phone never stops, would all like to honour Penelope’s good intentions. But not for exactly the same reasons and not at any price. Battle lines are constantly redrawn, until each in turn reveals what lies just beneath the surface.
Riotously funny, deliciously wicked and just plain desperate, all four parents reveal their most fundamental contradictions on what will ultimately prove to be the worst day of their lives, a day of reckoning with the god of carnage.
