This is all about a studly (yet white collar!) Man managing an NFL team, a newly pregnant girlfriend, and a shrewish mom. It’s about Men being Men and standing up to Men, and hardcore Manly negotiations. It’s about Men taking it to the edge and beyond and still pulling it off against all the odds. It’s about Men ignoring all advice and counsel and going their own way and staggering into Victory!
For those of you who haven’t seen it, the chief stud is Kevin Costner, the chief chick is Jennifer Garner. It also stars Dennis Leary, who is the asshole I’ve always dreamed I could be, who is just a snarky sarcastic dick through the whole thing. Frank Langella is the team owner who at the end doesn’t fire Costner, I think out of admiration for the size and quality of Costner’s balls. He actually mentions that on camera.
This movie just pulls all my Manstrings and elevates my testosterone levels. It’s like an intensely bureaucratic version of Commando.
Something just occurred to me: this movie is kind of like the NFL version of that FIFA movie that also bombed, except the head honchos weren’t QUITE as conceited.
I actually enjoyed it. And I’m an European, so I know next to nothing about American Football or the concept of drafting players.
But as a thriller where the main character needs to gather information before making a decision, it absolutely works. The actors did well, the editing was fast-paced, the conversations fluid- I don’t know, maybe people more familiar with actual draft days may find lots of inconsistencies, but for me, the movie didn’t deserve the critical lambasting it got.
As someone intensely into the NFL, the “would this realistically happen in real life” aspect is by far the biggest failure for me. The trades are absolutely comical, and the way the front office is run makes no sense either (there is absolutely no way a team would trade its pick and suddenly set its sights on another player without having done their research; in reality NFL teams interview/research tons of players expected to go in their slot, even ones at positions they obviously won’t take).
Jennifer Garner’s character also just felt like straight-up pandering (and trying to attract a female audience) and the idea that the GM is semi-secretly schlepping the “cap guru” is also uncomfortable.
Caught the last half of this last nite flipping through the channels in a hotel on a work trip. (I was bored - was a tough call between HBO and PBS). I thought the split screens and shifting between captioned locations was distracting. And I’m neither a big fan of football nor Costner. But it was a mediocre time waster before hitting the sack.
So what was the deal w/ the QB? Was he just a conceited dick (not exactly uncommon among QBs) or was there some dark secret? I would have appreciated seeing how the next season panned out, but I guess the movie wasn’t subtitled “and the following season”.
