DRAFT DAY (2014) ENGLISH REVIEW

Review

Kevin Costner experienced several of his biggest successes, as well as some of his most memorable roles, in a series of sports related films like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and Tin Cup, and so on one level it's hardly surprising to see him returning to the athletic field for Draft Day. But like an aging jock trying to reclaim the glory days of yore, Costner isn't quite able to capture the ebullience and swagger of youth. But you know what? That's largely a good thing in the patently formulaic but just as undeniably entertaining Draft Day, a film that literally counts down to that magical moment (for football fans, anyway) when the National Football League celebrates its annual ritual of inducting college recruits into the fold. The film probably saddles focal character Sonny Weaver, Jr. (Kevin Costner) with a few too many simultaneous personal and professional crises at one time, but there's a playfulness to Draft Day that may make the film surprisingly accessible even to those who care not one whit about penalty yards, sacks or PAT conversions.

Those who haven't grown up with a local major league sports team (whatever the sport) sometimes find it hard to understand the rabid nature of some fans. Fans are actually only a tangential element in Draft Day, albeit one that plays an important part as the film careens toward its hectic climax. Instead Draft Day concentrates on putative insiders, characters like Weaver, General Manager for the Cleveland Browns, his pregnant girlfriend Ali Parker (Jennifer Garner), the Browns' number cruncher in charge of monitoring salary cap requirements, and Vince Penn (Denis Leary), the Browns' newish coach who continually butts heads with Weaver. In just one of several melodramatic subplots winding through this probably overstuffed entry, Weaver's father was the ex-coach of the Browns, and one of junior's first tasks as General Manager was to fire his Dad. The film begins in the wake of the elder Weaver's death the week previously, casting a pall on what is typically an ebullient if intense time in the world of professional football.

While some of Draft Day might be too inside baseball (to horribly mix sports metaphors), the screenplay by Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman shies away from too much specific technical information, doling out the broad outlines of what's at stake in just the first few minutes of the film. The leading contender to be the number one draft pick is Heisman winner and University of Wisconsin quarterback Bo Callahan (Josh Pence). That pick is a foregone conclusion, and therefore the Seattle Seahawks, sitting in pole position (there go those mixed metaphors again), are expected to snatch up Callahan when they're first at bat (sorry, it's bound to stop sooner or later). Weaver, sitting in a forlorn seventh draft position, knows he has no chance of getting a player of Callahan's abilities, and when team owner Anthony Molina (Frank Langella) tells Weaver to "make a splash," there's only so much the hapless GM can really offer to do.

However, Weaver's been holding his cards close to his vest (poker's not a sport, is it?). An early morning offer from Seahawks General Manager Tom Michaels (Patrick St. Esprit) has offered to trade Weaver this year's first round pick for Weaver's next three first round picks. Weaver initially demurs, but after Molina's not too subtly veiled threat, he goes ahead, setting a quirky aggregation of plot points in motion. While Ali works the numbers to make sure picking Callahan won't put them over the team's salary cap, Weaver starts digging into Callahan's past, wondering why the Seahawks gave up their golden boy so easily. In the meantime, Weaver is dealing with entreaties by other hopeful college athletes who are more or less begging to be chosen.

Comparisons to Moneyball are probably inevitable with Draft Day, for both films want to expose the inner workings of major league sports, especially with regard to how to build a winning team. Moneyball is probably the more poetic of the two films, but despite Draft Day's relatively more prosaic quality, my hunch is some might end up caring about Weaver more than they did about Brad Pitt's Billy Beane. The ironic thing here is that in Moneyball, Beane and his team were analyzing things according to a quantifiable metric, certainly one of the most prosaic activities imaginable. By contrast, Weaver works entirely at the instinctual level, so much so that his questioning of Callahan's integrity starts to grate on everyone from Molina on down. But this may also be why the character resonates so deeply—he's a man of emotion, and that comes through quite clearly in Costner's unforced but forceful performance.

While Weaver is arguably the only truly fully fleshed out character in the film, the screenplay is able to offer vignettes involving an almost ungainly amount of supporting characters that actually help to quickly define them. Jennifer Garner's Ali is really little more than the stereotypical girlfriend wanting a commitment (especially now that she's pregnant), but she brings an unexpected depth and nuance to the role, offering a calm center to counter Weaver's more volatile nature. Ellen Burstyn is fantastic in a couple of quite short scenes as Weaver's mother. The first scene is played resolutely for laughs, when a rogue contender for Weaver's choice tweets a not very well kept secret, but the second, a showdown between Weaver and his mom over his Dad's funeral arrangements, is decidedly dramatic and provides both actors a fine moment to showcase their skills. The film is filled (again, almost overstuffed) with fine supporting work from Chadwick Boseman as a running back with a shaded past, Langella as the imperious team owner, and a surprisingly effective Sean Combs as Callahan's agent. The film also offer brief but enjoyable cameos by a glut of actors including Sam Elliott and Rosanna Arquette, as well as many real life athletes and sports journalists.