Reitman: Draft Day (2014)

Kevin Costner’s first sports film in over a decade sees him as Sonny Weaver, Jr., the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, who finds himself in the surprising position of getting the top drafted pick for the 2014 NFL season, University of Wisconsin quarterback Bo Callahan. Most of the film follows Costner as he profiles Bo, trying to pin down a “secret” that seems to be following him around – a secret it’s hard not to read in the light of Michael Sam's recent disclosure, even if the film doesn’t eventually head in that direction. As part of his research, Costner devotes himself to watching and rewatching reel upon reel of college football footage, allowing the film to really capture the peculiar cinephilic drive of a football manager, the compulsion to find that one frame, that one tic, that will reveal a football player in their entirety. Part of what’s nice about the film is that it provides a kind of historical overview of these moments, the canon of football cinephilia, culminating with the famed victory of the 49ers over the Bengals in 1985, when Joe Montana looked up from the huddle and glimpsed John Candy in the crowd, pointing him out to his team mates before leading them to victory. In some ways, those moments turn NFL into quite a contemplative sport, not unlike Costner’s baseball films, but only as a counterpoint to the main drive of the film, which is overwhelmingly visceral, compulsive and anxious. No NFL team has as storied or precarious a history as the Browns, and Reitman builds on that to envisage Draft Day as something like futures trading, or a way of making the full import of futures trading more visible and visceral – we’re reminded, time and again, that what’s at stake in Draft Day is securing a future, not just for a team but for an entire city, especially as the time frame tightens and tension mounts. As Sonny keeps reminding everyone, “the world we live in is not the same as the world we inhabited thirty seconds ago,” and if the film doesn’t strictly take place in real time, that’s because it aspires to something even more realistic – as the proliferation of split screens start to bleed into each other, it’s like experiencing the collapse of real time that occurs under conditions of unimaginable pressure, the way great footballers slow down the clock, as if the split-second intensity and precarity of NFL had simply become a feature of everyday life. At times, that can be a little claustrophobic – it tends to simply collapse the film into the 2014 NFL season, or pre-season, leaving little room for anything else. And it’s clear that the NFL has gone over the film with a fine-toothed comb, occasionally forcing Reitman to forsake his trademark ability to bring sentimentality just to the cusp of saccharine without slipping into it. But, then again, Costner shines in just this kind of sports environment – he’s got a dry, earthy pragmatism that tends to cut against whatever jingoism is wrapped around it, which he does here with aplomb, in one of the most gripping and compulsive sports dramas in recent years.