Pick a random ‘sports’ movie and you can be dang sure that just about 100% of them has really nothing to do with game being played and everything to do with the main character’s personal journey. Rocky, a boxing movie, is about a guy who faces his demons in a rags to riches tale of redemption, Field of Dreams, a baseball movie, is about a man who comes to terms with the bad relationship he had with his father. Even Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, a, well, dodgeball movie, is about a group of misfits who prove they’ve got the heart to be the best. So with Draft Day, you right away think, sure, it’s got ‘football’ in it but it’s probably more likely about a guy who something, something to fix his something, something. But you know what? Nope. It’s about football.
Draft Day is probably the first sports film in cinema history that caters directly to the fans of the sport it showcases. If you don’t know anything about football, there’s a lot that’s gonna go right over your head. Yes, there’s sort of a romance in there somewhere, and yup, there’s a guy who has to prove himself, but most of the time, it’s about building a team. Now you might remember Moneyball with Brad Pitt from 2011, a baseball movie that kinda did the same thing, with a general manager bucking the system to try and get his reluctant and disbelieving coach a team that could win. While yes, that movie threw a lot of pro sports stuff at us too, it was still somehow not about the game but the power of conviction. We believed in Pitt’s character because we could see the process being laid out in front of us, detailed and explained, while he himself made us root for him and fight to be a good dad and mentor.
With Draft Day, it’s much different. Here’s the story. Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner) is the GM of the Cleveland Browns, a team that didn’t do so well the season before. He’s got a lot on his mind. His father, the team’s former coach recently died, two years before fired by his own son for reasons only Sonny and his mother hold secret. Sonny’s younger girlfriend Allie (Jennifer Garner), who is also the team’s salary cap analyst, is pregnant, and the team’s owner (Frank Langella) is on his back to make a splash at the upcoming draft day or find a new job. So yeah. Pressure.
With less than twenty hours before the draft, Sonny gets a deal from the Seattle Seahawks GM (Patrick St. Esprit), offering him the country’s top pick, Heisman Trophy winner Bo Callahan (Josh Pence) for the next three years of first round picks. Sonny’s unsure, but caves under pressure to make the deal, his real goal to obtain a brilliant linebacker named Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), a guy who will deliver great defense, but, as defenses go, no splash. Well, things gets crazy and Sonny begins a one-day odyssey to figure out if the deal is worth it and if need be, how to manipulate it so the Browns come up on top.
So from all that, you get the sense that this is a high stakes football deal, and truly, it is. Director Ivan Reitman, the guy who brought us Animal House and Ghostbusters, delivers a pretty tense movie about what happens off the field in the offices and conference rooms of those in charge. Surely, movies have done this before, with Oliver Stone‘s Any Given Sunday one that jumps to mind, but you what that movie has that Draft Day doesn’t? You’re going to be surprised. Actual football. That’s right. There’s barely a single shot of football action on screen, only clips of it on monitors in the background and during a brief moment when a couple of plays are reviewed by the staff … on a monitor. This isn’t about the game on the grass but the game over the phone when managers have to make deals to build franchises, and while the players are important here, they take a way back seat to the number crunchers and gut instincts of those who give them the chance to play.
What’s probably most cool about the film is its sense of authenticity. Unlike Stone, who had to create his own league, the real National Football League was right behind this movie, allowing what looks like unprecedented access to the process, with real teams, stadiums, logos and more. Even ESPN got in on the action and real broadcasters took to calling play-by-play of the movie’s draft day event. If you’re a fan of football, this is very cool stuff. If you’re not, well, Jennifer Garner smiles a lot. That’s always a good thing.
So yes, the film is all football all the time, and if you have no idea or care about what a draft pick is, how important the rounds are, or any semblance of the enormous value of stats that go into making a team, this is going to be a bit hard to stay with. However, it’s got Costner in the lead, an actor who has always sort of embodied that golden age of Hollywood presence, making you feel really cozy while you watch him work. He gives Sonny plenty of weight and while the film can’t quite hit the emotional highs when it wants to, he does good things here.
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However, it’s Boseman, whose Vontae Mack is sort of the anti-Rod Tidwell from Jerry Maguire, a talented player who knows he’s in a dull position but does it better than anyone on the field, hoping just to get noticed, has got the most impact. This is a character that could have easily been mishandled, but the film rightly gives him the most depth, a young man with enormous responsibilities and a touching backstory. He’s a football star who spends more time out of uniform than in, and while Cuba Gooding Jr.‘s Oscar winning turn as Tidwell is well-deserved, Boseman does great work here, too, even if it is limited. He’s really got the only moment that feels the most well-earned, and as such has the movie’s biggest emotional payoff. Now that he’s raking in high marks for Black Panther, it’s a good time to check him out here as well.
Draft Day is a good film, one that avoids the formula even as it layers in some humanity along the way, which in truth, is sort of unnecessary. Garner is certainly good as Allie, but that whole subplot could have been ripped right out and the movie would have worked just as well. I’m actually saying that this is a movie that should have gotten rid of the stuff that makes others like it work, simply because it’s so committed to the premise of the trade. Either way, this is is tough call (flag on the play?). If you love sports movies, there’s a lot to like. If you’re a fan of Conster or Boseman (and you should be), there’s double the reason to give it a shot. Touchdown. The crowd goes wild.