Flawed Football Film

Draft Day works as an ad for the NFL, but it's a bust for moviegoers

The behemoth that is the National Football League has long extended its reach beyond the boundaries of its season. With offseason training, free agent signings and more, the league can never provide too much fodder for its fans and the media that cover it.

The crown jewel of the NFL’s offseason is its annual draft of college players, an event chronicled in Draft Day. Kevin Costner plays Sonny Weaver Jr., the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, a team that’s traditionally the doormat of the league. In the world of the movie, the Browns hold the No. 7 pick in the upcoming draft, and Weaver likely needs to make a splash in order to hold on to his job.

The presence of Kevin Costner in a sports movie does help keep it entertaining even when it shouldn’t be.

A variety of characters help or hinder his decision-making, including Ali (Jennifer Garner), the person in charge of making sure the Browns stay under the salary cap, who also happens to be his girlfriend; head coach Penn (Denis Leary), who wants Weaver to draft a running back to complement his rising quarterback; and Anthony Molina (Frank Langella), the owner who’s breathing down his neck at every turn.

Among the hopefuls looking to be the Browns’ pick are Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), a linebacker who’s impressed Weaver with his prowess and poise; Ray Jennings (real-life Houston Texans running back Arian Foster), son of a former Brown hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps; and Bo Callahan (Josh Pence), the perceived No. 1 pick whom everybody seems to love, except for Weaver.

Unlike other films that have to use fake team names and uniforms, the NFL stamp is all over Draft Day. Personalities from ESPN and the NFL Network are front and center from the get-go, as well as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and others associated with the league.

Consequently, the film has the sheen of realism that helps carry it for a little while. Unfortunately, that masking of the film’s flaws doesn’t last long. Apparently thinking that the behind-the-scenes wheelings and dealings of team executives might not be enough to carry the whole film, co-writers Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph toss in a series of personal issues for Weaver, none of which land with any weight.

Although the back-and-forth drama about whom the Browns will take or whether they’ll try to move up in the draft can be interesting, especially for fans, the filmmakers hedge their bets a bit too much. They repeatedly throw in stories about the NFL’s past as words of wisdom for one character or another, but it comes off more as their trying to prove their football knowledge than great or useful dialogue.

Also, it’s difficult to imagine many NFL general managers acting in the reactionary, unsubstantiated way they do in several instances throughout the movie. That’s not to say that the moves they make couldn’t happen, but to say they’re far-fetched would be putting it mildly.

However, the presence of Costner in a sports movie does help keep it entertaining even when it shouldn’t be. His confidence and calmness in the face of situations that call for the opposite make Weaver into someone for whom it’s easy to root.

Garner is good as Ali, although the role calls for her to do little more than reassure Weaver that he’s on the right track. Leary, Langella and others generally stay within their wheelhouses, meaning that they never offer anything truly surprising.

Draft Day is a mostly innocuous film that’s essentially a feature-length advertisement for how great the NFL is. That may work for hardcore football fans, but for movie buffs looking for a great time at the theater, it’s a bust.

Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner in Draft Day.

Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner in Draft Day

Photo by Dale Robinette Summit Entertainment

Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner in Draft Day.

Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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