Draft Day
I’ve made no secret about my weakness for the underdog sports genre, especially when it comes to football stories. I’ve never played the sport in my life, except for on the playground, but I was born and raised a Cleveland Browns fan, and remain one to this day, even though they’ve brought so much pain to their fanbase over the years, whether it’s their three AFC Championship losses to Denver in the ’80s; the team’s moving to Baltimore in the ’90s; or their return to the league as an expansion team now, and the legacy of losing that has become the norm. Even though the Atlanta Falcons are, arguably, more my favorite team now (as they have been since I “adopted” them as such with my family’s move to Georgia in 1988), I’m always going to be a Browns fan, regardless of how the team struggles for an identity.
I mention this to clarify why it’s difficult for me to look at Ivan Reitman’s new dramatic comedy, “Draft Day” with much objectivity. The main character, Sonny Weaver Jr. (played by a fine Kevin Costner), is the GM of the Browns, and the film follows him through the hours leading up to the NFL draft. The team struggled the year before, after their rising star QB (Brian Drew) got injured after leading them to a 5-1 start, and with the 7th pick, Weaver is under pressure from the owner (the always imposing Frank Langella) to make a big splash. When an opportunity comes up to trade up to the #1 pick, and get quarterback Bo Callahan, the already anointed “next big thing,” according to the pros, it seems too good to pass up. His coach (Denis Leary, a wicked pleasure, as always) is happy with Drew, whose return from injury is progressing nicely, and could really use a running back like Ray Jennings, whose father played for the Browns. In the back of Weaver’s mind, though, is Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), a linebacker who got four sacks on Callahan when they played, and might be a strong anchor on defense for years to come. In addition to all these factors, Sonny is dealing with his girlfriend (Jennifer Garner, smart as a whip and dead-pan funny) getting pregnant, and his mother (Ellen Burstyn) riding him about honoring his father, a legendary coach for Cleveland who just passed away a week ago, and whom Sonny fired the year before, much to the ire of fans.
This isn’t a comedy in the way that we’ve come to expect from Reitman, working with a well-researched (an NFL-approved) screenplay by Scott Rothman & Rajiv Joseph. “Dave” seems like a sometimes-obvious comparison, but the film I felt like this reminded me of was Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball,” and how it focused on front-office politics more than it did what goes on on the field. That it doesn’t succeed quite as well as “Moneyball” does has little to do with anything Reitman does “wrong,” per se; it’s just a different way of approaching similar material, and as a football fan, there’s not much I disliked about “Draft Day.” It looks at the people who take football seriously, not just the players and front-office people, but the fans, and shows how everything converges into frustration and excitement, sometimes at the same time. It has unnecessary personal drama going on around Weaver (like how his relationship with Garner’s Ali is “secret,” and the tension with his mother), which is the film’s biggest mistake, when the drama of how Weaver tries and build his own legacy with the Browns, and tries to put his own stamp on this team that’s so well identified as his father’s, is drama enough. Costner plays that part extremely well, and watching him wrestle with the decisions he makes, as well as double-down on some that aren’t easily understood by people who aren’t him, is some of the most compelling stuff in the film. The film is far from anyone’s best efforts, but everybody knows what they have, and present it in an entertaining fashion that true fans will appreciate.
