Draft Day
Rated PG-13: For brief strong language and sexual references.
Runtime: 109 min
From the start, Draft Day is an awkward-looking film. On the surface, it looks like it’s trying to capture the Hollywood magic of Moneyball (AKA: The movie that made you give a shit about baseball team building for two hours), but it doesn’t have any of the big names to make it anything close to Oscar worthy. The casting of Kevin Costner (All Waterworld/Postman/Heaven’s Gate jokes aside, he is actually good for what little material there is) and the odd release in mid-April all but affirms this. And, yet, it is also movie that received the glittering seal of approval of the multi-billion dollar juggernaut that is the NFL and ESPN respectively, which has more than a few scratching their heads.
Not to mention the fact that the script was pitched by a relatively young writing duo whose credits between the two of them before Draft Day are a few episodes of the canceled show Nurse Jackie. Not exactly something that screams “this is a good investment” at the top of its lungs.
But despite the cash investment and permission to use the NFL logo, ESPN personalities and actual teams (a lovely hook for football fans that may be lost on everyone else), what Draft Day ends up being is neither an exciting nor a particularly groundbreaking film. The script is merely an exercise in trying to get the audience from point A (the beginning of the NFL Draft Day) to point B (the conclusion of said draft) through a sea of meaningless points that fail to make any sort of impact.
For the uninitiated, Draft Day is the day of the year when NFL General managers of the 32 teams in the National Football League draft college football athletes through a series of rounds, each team picking in an order based on their team’s respective performance. There IS plenty of room for drama to be milked from this day. And to the film’s credit, when it sticks to the football side of things, it’s every bit as exciting as watching Brad Pitt make all those frantic phone call trades in Moneyball.
The clashes between Cleveland Browns’ GM Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner) and his brash new coach Vince Penn (Dennis Leary who all but steals the shows in the scenes he’s in), the last-minute wheeling, dealing and double-dealing over phone lines, the appeasing of the Browns’ rabid team fan base, it’s all here; more than enough to keep the film interesting without having to double-dip dangerously into “soap opera B-story” territory. But, unfortunately, a good two-thirds of the film is just that.
Sonny tries to get over his father’s recent death (the former coach of the Cleveland Browns), while avoiding discussing his feelings for his number cruncher/workplace fling Ali (Jennifer Garner, who’s all but wasted in the role). The romance subplot just feels awkward to sit through and the needlessly complicated family drama isn’t much better. Field Of Dreams it is not. But when Draft Day sticks to the subject matter at hand, without feeling the need to water down the experience with weak subplots, the film has its good moments.
Moneyball proved that you don’t have to ride out on trite clichés in script writing 101 to make an audience care about sports. Draft Day comes up far short of doing the same.
Grade: B
Verdict: Are you ready to talk about some football?!
