Ali: Jennifer Garner
Coach Penn: Denis Leary
Anthony Molina: Frank Langella
Vontae Mack: Chadwick Boseman
Chris Crawford: Sean Combs
Bo Callahan: Josh Pence
Tom Michaels: Patrick St. Esprit
Earl Jennings: Terry Crews
Ray Jennings: Arian Foster
Barb Weaver: Ellen Burstyn
Summit Entertainment
presents a film directed by Ivan Reitman. Written by Scott Rothman & Rajiv
Joseph. Running time: 109 min. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language and
sexual references).
Oh man, do I love football!
I just can’t get enough of it. I wasn’t always this way. As a kid, I remember
watching my father and his zeal for the game. He brainwashed us. We watched the
New York Football Giants every Sunday in the fall. He plastered our walls with
posters. The Super Bowl was a family event every year. He taped games and
watched them over again. It’s the only reason he knew how to work the VCR.
For many years, I simply
tried. I’d be in the same room that the game was on. I’d help make and eat the
nachos we made for every halftime. I’d usually fall asleep on the floor for a
good afternoon nap. But, eventually the brainwashing began to take. Finally, as
an adult I started not merely watching the game, but studying it. I purchase a
package on my television provider each year that costs me a ridiculous amount
of money so I can have the opportunity to see any of the Sunday games I choose.
Each year I watch more and more football, professional and otherwise.
In recent years, the
National Football League has turned Draft Day into as much of a public event as
it has always been for the league, thanks to their televising of the entire
draft on the NFL Network. It’s amazing how many people are willing to watch a
bunch of suits announcing the names and positions of the franchise picks for
two days straight. It’s a testament to brainwashing. The PR people at the NFL
are marketing geniuses. I bet they could figure a way to fix our national debt
by getting the public to buy it back from themselves.
So now, the NFL has teamed
up with Hollywood to bring us “Draft Day”. Essentially, it is the ultimate
sports picture, with the underdogs rising to the challenge of competing against
the best on the big game day, except this time the big game is the business of
buying players and trading pick positions so that the worst teams in the NFL
can bolster their rosters with the best new recruits. Director Ivan Reitman has
called in one of the most sure fire veteran sports flick heroes to anchor this
endeavor with Kevin Costner. Actually, his entire roster is made up mostly of
some of the best veteran players in Hollywood—the sexy yet business like
Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Frank Langella, Ellen Burstyn, former NFL player
turned sitcom and action star Terry Crews, hip-hop and entertainment mogul Sean
“P. Diddy” Combs, and countless other supporting players.
We meet Sonny Weaver, Jr.,
general manager of the Cleveland Browns, one of the oldest NFL teams, which has
been plagued with a long stretch of disappointing seasons in the past few
decades. As played by Costner, Weaver feels put upon by his life. He was forced
to fire his own father as the team’s longtime head coach recently and his
father has just passed away as the story begins. It all takes place on draft
day as the team tries to finalize its first draft pick decision and work some
deals to better position themselves to grab the highest draft pick they can.
I don’t know if Scott
Rothman and Ravij Joseph were unaware about how the Seattle Seahawks were
coming on in the league when they wrote the screenplay, or if Seattle really
has such good draft picks at this point in time, but Weaver makes a deal with
the Hawks’ GM for the number one pick, which everyone assumes will be the
superstar quarterback Bo Callahan. This doesn’t sit well with Weaver’s new head
coach Penn (Leary), who feels their current QB is perfect for his system. It
also discourages a rookie linebacker, Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), who is
depending on Weaver’s confidence in his ability to go early in the first round
rather than later, which will greatly affect his pay grade. Penn wants the son
of a former Cleveland player to be the new star running back of the team. Very
little really seems to be in the hands of Weaver, who even made the Seattle
trade under pressure from the team’s owner (Langella).
Weaver has his own personal
problems as well. His girlfriend (Garner) has just informed him that he’s about
to become a father. Their romance is a secret due to the fact that she is also
the team’s accountant responsible for maintaining the salary cap. His mother
(Burstyn) is also pressuring him to hold a memorial for his father. Why she
would do this on draft day could only be to create more dilemmas for our hero.
While these subplots work to
bring some levity into the proceedings and add some depth to Weaver’s
character, they are the sideshows. The main attraction is the business of
football, and it is more fascinating than it would seem. The backroom dealings
are intricate and tricky. Think “Moneyball” except this all happens in the 20
hours or so before the draft begins. The behind the scenes trading involve a
great deal of smaller market teams trying to get in on the dealing, allowing
Reitman’s second unit directors to bring us beautiful introductory shots of
such cities across the country as Houston, Texas, Kansas City, Missouri,
Buffalo, New York, Cincinnati, Ohio, Seattle, Washington, and of course,
Cleveland, Ohio.
The fact that the NFL has
thrown their full support behind this movie only helps it. There’s nothing
worse that watching a movie about professional football and having to endure
team names like the Dallas Knights and the Chicago Rhinos and team colors that
a high school squad wouldn’t be caught dead in. Many of the larger markets like
the New York, Florida and California teams are conspicuously absent from the
proceedings, but I suppose the more exciting draft day trading really happens
among these smaller markets anyway.
Much of the dialogue is
spoken over telephone calls. Reitman uses the old filmmaking technique of the
split screen to make these scenes more dynamic and allow for the semblance of
more character interaction. He modernizes the storytelling device by allowing
the split screens to overlap and even show the characters crossing back and
forth across each other, swapping from one end of the screen to the other at
times. This allows characters who are thousands of miles apart to interact as
if they’re in the same room.
“Draft Day” feels like a
classic sports flick even though there is no actual football played in it. All
the action takes place in the off-season, so we only get a few bits of game
reel footage to really see the game. The fans are represented as protesting the
management at their corporate offices decked out in full game day support apparel.
I don’t know if that is an actual phenomenon or not—I’m not that
brainwashed—but it helps to enforce that sports flick atmosphere.
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