Draft Day opens in the month prior to the actual 2014 NFL draft. So, Hollywood gets an “A” for timing the release just right. Fans of the NFL are primed for just this sort of film since the pre-season games of August still feel so impossibly far away after a long, cold winter.
Draft Day tells the story of Sonny Weaver Jr. (Kevin Costner) and the choices he must make on draft day in the NFL. Weaver is the general manager of the Cleveland Browns and he is struggling to make the right choices – choices about everything in his life really. Sonny’s girlfriend, Ali (Jennifer Garner), wants to be supportive on what she knows is a big day for the team and both of them personally. Ali works as the legal executive for Sonny and is his main NFL capologist. The film opens with them still in the midst of an unspoken argument from the night before. Not a great start for Sonny at all. Sonny is assailed from all sides regarding his choices past and present. You see, Sonny is from a football town. He grew up there. His father was the Browns coach for many years. Sonny grew up in the organization and eventually became GM. In his second year as GM, he fired his own father. The town hasn’t forgiven him for it yet either, despite his record.
So, while the team’s owner, Anthony Molina (Frank Langella), is pressuring Sonny to pick a flashy player with the team’s pick or lose his job, the new Head Coach, Penn (Denis Leary), wants his say on the pick to help him run his offensive scheme. Meanwhile, Sonny has his eye on another player altogether and knows he is the best pick he could possibly make but does not know if he can live with the consequences. Add to that, Sonny’s mother Barb (Ellen Burstyn) shows up with an urgent/odd request to make and will not take no for an answer, and you get a very busy day for already stressed GM.
Costner’s Sonny is a steady-as-rock sort of fellow and very mid-western. This is the old-school type of guy that Costner could likely do in his sleep, and he comes across as very natural. He is always in control and never talks about his own feelings. He also genuinely loves football. He reveres it the way his father did and that was likely their greatest common bond. Good work by Costner here with very limited material.
The supporting cast is excellent. Leary spits out his lines like nails. Garner gets the best zingers in the film. Molina is debonair to the hilt. The problems with the film are in the writing. The poorly-crafted script left the actors to behave in unbelievable ways time and again. It is horrible to see a character act in a certain way for the majority of the film and then face an obstacle/choice that must be overcome and then react in a manner completely atypical. Sadly, this happens repeatedly. If the worst that you could say about this film was “not buying that Garner is into Costner,” then that could be overcome by a great script. However, the script does the opposite. It pins them in Hepburn and Tracy confrontations that just fizzle out.
Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner in “Draft Day.” Photo by Dale Robinette
© 2013 Summit Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.
The only good thing I can say about the writing is that the plot itself is set in a venue of great interest to many Americans – the NFL. The feel of the movie is a bit like looking behind the curtain of the NFL during what is certainly an intense time of its season. Football fans will not be disappointed by the high stakes poker aspect of the sport. The deal-making scenes are good. The literally on-the-clock aspect of the draft plays nicely and builds to an acceptable conclusion. This isn’t Any Given Sunday (1999) by any means. That movie was about NFL action, Draft Day is about the armchair QB – the fantasy team owner, which is basically what a GM is – to a certain degree.
The upside of Draft Day is that it does not paint every character as an angel, as you might suspect in a NFL-infomercial sort of manner, but the downside is that it does not portray the characters as whole and believable people based on their actions and reactions. It would have been nice to have seen Aaron Sorkin or anyone named Sabol given the chance to punch up the script for this one.
Steven Gahm
Latest posts by Steven Gahm (see all)
- Top Ten Horror Movies To Watch On Halloween - October 30, 2013