Draft Day, 2014.
Directed by Ivan Reitman.
Starring Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Ellen Burstyn, Denis Leary and Frank Langella.
SYNOPSIS:
The first day of the NFL draft proves dramatic for the general manager of a team in need of a turnaround.
There are a lot of things Draft Day gets right. It’s a ‘sports movie’ that can be enjoyed by hard core football fans or people who couldn’t tell you the difference between a touchdown or a field goal. Rather than focusing on an actual football game Draft Day uses the intense and time restrictive pressure of the first day of the NFL draft to wrap its story around. Any sports fan who has watched the NFL draft on TV (a painfully slow and boring process) will be delighted to see the action packed craziness that takes place behind the scenes with players, teams, and owners scrambling to make decisions that will impact the lives of the players and the success of their teams.
Using real NFL teams was also a great decision by the filmmakers. The Cleveland Browns are the ultimate underdog and the film does a great job of using real players and media figures throughout the film. The draft is exciting because it is essentially a high stakes poker tournament. You know what your team needs and you know every players stats but you don’t know if those players are hiding any flaws behind those stats or what is really going on with any of the other teams making these same decisions. It’s a day of bluffing and taking leaps of faith, hoping you made the right call at the end of the day.
Hiring Kevin Costner to star in your sports movie is always a good call. In Draft Day Costner plays Sonny Weaver, general manager to the down-on-their-luck Cleveland Browns. If Sonny doesn’t make the right decisions in this year’s NFL draft he can kiss his job goodbye. Costner is an excellent anchor in Draft Day. He’s likeable and believable as a man torn between his team and his personal life. Most importantly he’s a man you want to see succeed.
Costner is joined by an excellent supporting cast including Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Ellen Bursytn, and Frank Langella. All of these actors do a fine job in the film , but now we’re getting to what’s wrong with Draft Day. Making Garner’s character (the team’s salary cap expert) also Costner’s love interest was a huge negative for me. I just couldn’t buy that a woman who worked so hard to “make it” in a male dominated work environment would essentially be dating her boss. The age difference didn’t help me much with this storyline and her ‘big reveal’ in the film just felt like too much to believe in one day.
I had similar problems with Burstyn’s character (Costner’s mother in the film) but perhaps if the film had focused on just a love interest or just his relationship with his mother I wouldn’t have minded as much. Having said that Bursytn and Garner both do a great job with their roles. Leary and Langella, playing the Head Coach and Team’s Owner also add some depth to roles that don’t have much going on otherwise.
Draft Day suffers from trying to do too much in one movie focusing on one hectic and dramatic day. However, the cast from Costner down to the actors who play all of the athletes hoping to get drafted on the first day, do a fine job of keeping you interested in the outcome of the movie. And the final section of the movie, during the actual draft, is superbly entertaining. That section of the film is so engaging in fact it helps you forget about any of the films other problems and makes the film worth a trip to the theatre.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Amy Richau is a freelance entertainment and sports writer. Follow her on Twitter.
Originally published October 4, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
