Mary
Elizabeth
WinsteadSource

One of the FirstShowing editors chose Smashed as one of his favorite films of 2012 largely in part due to Mary’s performance. Here’s what he had to say:

Winstead, a great actress with a very hit-or-miss filmography, found a fantastic script to showcase another of her excellent performances with James Ponsoldt’s Smashed, in which she plays an alcoholic named Kate who tries to get her life back on track. Like the film itself, Winstead is raw and unflinching here, unafraid to imbue her performance with real devastating emotion instead of hinging on cliche and melodrama to get the job done. Kate is damaged goods, and the normally-cheery Winstead disappears into the character, giving her a powerful sense of intensity that shines whenever she’s on screen.

UK site HeyUGuys has reviewed Smashed and I’ve posted part of it below. Hit the link to read the review in full:

Winstead will probably be best known to most for her performances in films such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Die Hard 4.0, The Thing and Final Destination 3. She’s always given the impression that she’s an actress with a great deal of talent, even if she’s rarely been given much to sink her teeth into here. Kudos then to Smashed director James Ponsoldt who saw enough raw ability in Winstead to hand her the challenging lead role of Kate Hannah.

The film comes in at a slender 81 minutes, so it’s clear this was never meant to be a comprehensive breakdown of addiction and recovery. We join and leave Kate at moments that feel like they could be occurring in the middle of her story.

Sometimes that’s to the film’s detriment. We get hints at Kate’s back story that feel jarringly unexplored, and skipping past stages in the recovery process often feel convenient as they surely would have been the most challenging to portray on screen. The main focus therefore falls on Kate’s relationship with Charlie, and as their relationship and Kate’s career start to crumble there’s an interesting thread about how the honesty that comes with sobriety can be just as destructive as the initial dependency.

For what it sets out to achieve and the amount it chooses to portray, Smashed does a solid job – made all the more notable thanks to Winstead. From her heartbreakingly raw and fearless scenes as an unwieldy drunkard, to those with pain, anguish and struggle etched onto her face as a now sober young woman all too aware that her life is falling apart around her, Winstead loudly announces that there’s a lot more to her than simply being the love interest of a Vampire Hunter. Aided by a similarly strong supporting cast (which includes Megan Mullally, Octavia Spencer and a wonderful turn from Nick Offerman), Winstead doesn’t expose Smashed, but rather garners it more credit and attention than perhaps it would otherwise have deserved.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Digital Spy has reviewed Smashed and wrote that Mary impresses in the “raw drama”:

Winstead is fearless, playing a variation on her ‘good girl’ persona that feels absolutely real and painfully relatable – you needn’t have any experience with substance addiction to identity with her struggle. But beyond the terror of what the addiction does to Kate physically and emotionally, it’s her slow process of coming to terms with reality that gives the story both its sadness and its strength. Because we like Kate and Charlie, and their relationship genuinely seems to be grounded in love, we want them to be able to work through their problems.

Ponsoldt tells his poignant, honest story in unsentimental strokes, and his script is both sharply observed and consistently surprising. He offers just enough in the way of backstory to add shading to Winstead’s already nuanced performance, with a childhood weight issue referenced early on and Kate’s unashamedly boozy mother (Mary Kay Place) making a charged appearance later in the film.

Smashed is a smart, sensitive and appropriately uncomfortable watch, offering an unrelentingly clear-eyed view of dependence, both emotional and substance-based.