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

Jennifer Lawrence plays overwrought mom in thriller Die My Love

Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love

Photo by Kimberley French/courtesy of MUBI

Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love.

Writer/director Lynne Ramsay does not make feel-good movies. Her previous two films —You Were Never Really Here and We Need to Talk About Kevin — were about a traumatized veteran who tracks down missing girls for a living and parents reckoning with a child who might be a sociopath, respectively. Her latest, Die My Love, has a story as dark as its title.

Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) are a married couple who move into a run-down house that used to belong to Jackson’s uncle, who shot and killed himself on the property. That doesn’t exactly scream “great vibes,” but the somewhat manic duo quickly introduce a child into the equation, an event that forms a schism between two people who previously seemed to be on the same off-kilter wavelength.

While Jackson works to provide for the family, Grace is left to take care of the baby and herself at the somewhat remote house. She doesn’t appear to be a big fan of the arrangement, engaging in all manner of odd behavior, like crawling around the floor, talking to herself, and taking the baby on miles-long walks to visit her mother-in-law, Pam (Sissy Spacek), who’s not doing well herself after recently losing her husband, Harry (Nick Nolte).

Ramsay, who co-wrote the film with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, foregrounds Grace’s experience above all others, but the film is far from straightforward. The idea of post-partum depression is raised as a reason for Grace’s weird behavior, but as both she and Jackson are introduced as two people who skew to the “ab” side of normal, it’s difficult to say that everything she does is due to feelings that arise after giving birth.

Plus, Grace has plenty to be upset about in general, including living in a death house, being left alone with their child the majority of the time, and Jackson bringing home a yapping dog without even so much as a conversation. But the manifestation of her anger/depression is hard to parse, as Ramsay includes scenes of her carrying around a butcher knife, meeting up with a mysterious figure on a motorcycle, and other strange things that may or may not actually be happening.

There is clearly a lot of metaphorical work being done by seemingly random things like the reappearance of a black horse on multiple occasions, blaring rock music that accompanies several scenes, and the use of the 1x1 aspect ratio by Ramsay. It’s easy to feel the intensity of the film’s central relationship and their conflicts even if you can’t make heads or tails of the allusions that the filmmaker seems to love.

Lawrence is put through the wringer almost as much as she was in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, and her performance is one that can be felt strongly. Still, because the narrative is unclear, she often appears to be overwrought in certain scenes. Pattinson never fits well with his uncaring and/or oblivious character. Spacek makes a nice impression in a limited amount of screen time, but why Ramsay chose to use the ultra-talented LaKeith Stanfield in the nothing part of the motorcycle rider is baffling.

Those who love to dig into symbolism and non-linear storytelling will have a field day with the arty Die My Love. But for everyone else, anything Ramsay might have been trying to say about the difficulties of being a mother gets buried under many scenes that don’t make any logical sense and over-the-top acting that’s only fit to match the bizarreness of the film itself.

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Die My Love is now playing in theaters.

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