I’ve listened nine or ten times to a line spoken by Stillwater costar Camille Cottin, and for the life of me I can’t understand what she’s saying.

It happens at the :43 mark, and she’s saying it quietly to Matt Damon‘s character — a beefy, burly, cap-wearing 40something bumblefuck type — and is apparently referring to his incarcerated daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin). The line she says to Damon is “the father of duhkat?…he left in six” something-or-other.

Three minutes later: I’ve listened to this damn line 13 times with my excellent headphones, and it’s driving me crazy.

This plus Damon as a yokelish Midwesterner who probably loves Donald Trump has raised my hackles slightly. I’m sorry but I don’t care for heavy-set fellows who swallow their words…vaguely surly, low-key clock punchers who drawl “yes sir” and “yes ma’am” and who resemble those beasts who stormed the Capitol on 1.6 and who still insist the election was stolen. I love hanging with super-smart reporters who work for the Boston Globe, but not gutty-wuts like this…sorry.

A good portion of Stillwater was shot in Marseilles, and apparently depicts Damon running up against some local thugs while searching for evidence that might free his daughter. An American primitive clashing with Marseilles baddies = John Frankenheimer‘s French Connection II.

Basic Stillwater logline: “A father works to exonerate his estranged daughter of a murder she never committed.” Tom McCarthy‘s film pops on 7.30.21.