Draft Day (2014)

(In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) Refreshingly enough, Draft Day doesn’t spend a lot of time on the playing field—it’s all about backroom deals and high tension on the day of the NFL Draft. It’s clear that this is a day rife with potential conflict and drama, but the challenge here is in orchestrating a suspenseful presentation and blending all the subplots for maximal impact. In this regard, veteran director Ivan Reitman (for whom this was his final film—a better swan song than many of his previous movies) is able to keep the pieces moving at a brisk pace: Crisp cinematography and a constant sense of forward movement make this film more visually interesting than you’d expect. It also probably has more split-screen phone conversations than all of the other 2010s Hollywood movies put together, with some characters poking out of their side of the screen. (In the film’s showcase move, repeated twice, a character talking on the phone even seems to walk around his interlocutor as the split screen blends their surroundings together.)  An impressive cast also helps: Kevin Costner is his usual brand of stoicism as a hard-headed general manager trying to orchestrate complex transactions. Chadwick Boseman impresses in an early role as a promising prospect. Plenty of other known faces make sometimes-brief appearances. The script is profoundly sports-literate and will often use a mixture of both historical footage and real-life football personalities in cameos. And yet, despite the film studiously presenting football as a religion (and one that doesn’t destroy its players’ brains, oh no), the film feels unusually accessible to those outcasts who don’t really care about the game of football but are looking for some juicy behind-the-scenes drama. It’s unfortunate that the actual script isn’t so sharp on the nuts-and-bolts of the story. Much of the drama is fuelled by one inexplicably dumb trade that needs to be undone, and the idiot ball gets passed around a few times during the film. It’s also quite old-fashioned in some of its plotting choices, not quite pushing the envelope as much as its presentation. Still, I had a much-better time than I expected watching Draft Day: It’s propulsive stuff, pleasantly dramatized (I’m not surprised to find out that many have criticized it as being outlandish by pro football standards) and, frankly, more compulsively watchable than many better movies.