Copyright © 1999 by Michael
Segers, All rights reserved
Sometimes reviewers talk
about films—cold, hard structures, forms, at best shadows flickering on a
screen that link to the head rather than to the heart. When the week is done,
and the popcorn is hot, however, there is nothing like a movie in all its
movieness to get us outside of ourselves for a couple hours, and movieness means
a lot of heart, at least a few laughs, a few tears, a moment or two on the edge
of the seat, something old, something new, and in the best Hollywood tradition,
quite a lot borrowed. Movies and baseball, like blue jeans and jazz, are
distinctly American contributions to the life and culture of the whole world.
So, with a movie about baseball, like For Love of the Game, starring
Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston (who has had a previous turn in a sports-themed
film, Jerry Maguire), only playing the national anthem at the beginning
could have done more to make this a film which should have opened on the Fourth
of July.
It has been ten years since
we’ve seen Costner on a baseball diamond—Field of Dreams (1989) and Bull
Durham (1988)—years that have not been particularly kind to him, either
professionally or physically, since at forty-four, this may be his last chance
to play ball or play a ballplayer convincingly. But, in For Love of the Game,
he is at the top of his acting form, bringing the old Costner charm to the
romantic side of this movie, a robust athletic ability to the baseball side
(although he had a stand-in for the pitching).
This is an all out, high
octane movie, no filmy pretensions allowed. Director Sam Raimi (who directed
last year’s very different A Simple Plan) has put together a top notch
formula for a date movie, with some heart-stopping sports sequences to keep the
women glued to their seats as well as some heart-throbbing love scenes to get
the men reaching for their hankies. It’s soap opera meets World Series. But,
doggone it, it works—and I don’t even like sports movies… or soap operas.
When we meet Detroit
Tigers’ pitcher Billy Chapel (Costner), he strikes out twice. In New York to
face the Yankees, he learns the Tigers are being sold, and having spent his
whole career with the Detroit team, he is about to be traded to another team if
he doesn’t retire. After he gets the news, he calls his on-again, off-again,
currently-on lady friend, Jane Aubrey (Preston), asking her to meet him at his
cavernous suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. When he finally sees her, the next
morning, she tells him that their relationship is over because she is taking a
new job in England, because she knows that his most important relationship is
with the ball and the diamond rather than with her. It seems not to occur to him
to take the relationship to the next level or inning, and so, he heads for the
Bronx and the distinctive welcome that New York Yankee fans give the visiting
team.
As innings of what may be
his last, best game unfold, Billy looks back on his relationship with Jane.
There is a skillful variation in pacing, from the fiercely believable action
sequences of the game to the slow, sometimes corny vignettes of a relationship
between two people who just were not meant for each other—and no one, neither
they nor the director, ever seems to realize this. We aren’t watching Eyes
Wide Shut. We aren’t pushing any envelopes or breaking new ground. What we
are doing is celebrating what movies are all about, warm and cuddly, complete
with a fuzzy, even predictable holiday montage of Billy, Jane, and her daughter
(Jena Malone, who gives life to a role written as a stereotype). Instead of the
"most inspiring movie of the year," promised by the advertisements,
this is the most comfortable movie of some time.
I was surprised by the
sophistication of the structure. The present moment of the game is shown not
only from Billy’s point of view in the stadium but also from Jane’s, as she
is unable to avoid the game, either in the cab to the airport or at the airport.
The considerable humor of the movie was also a surprise, and many of the laughs
involved the superb performance by John C. Reilly as Billy’s friend and
catcher, who ought to be expecting an Academy Award nomination for a performance
by a supporting actor.
Preston and Costner
aren’t given a very promising script to work with, but they do better than the
material deserves. They play two folks facing middle age and loneliness who have
been around the diamond quite a few times, on the same team and otherwise.
Costner’s intensity and Preston’s flightiness work well together. Maybe both
characters just welcomed the challenge.
I don’t usually comment
on such fine points of film-making as sound, but the sound track of For Love
of the Game really shines (sounds off?). In fact, the sound becomes a part
of the story, since Billy mentally shuts off the noises of the stadium, even
Yankee Stadium. The music subtly weaves through the movie, used the way a good
cook uses herbs—not so distinctly that one says, "Oh, oregano!" but
rather, "Oh, just what is that?" Trisha Yearwood’s refreshing remake
of Paul Simon’s "Something So Right" is perhaps the musical
highlight of the movie, like so much of the music, sounding as if it should be
heard on a scratchy old record album. (Young readers, that’s a sort of black
not so compact disk.) That tremulous troubadour of the frustrated heart, Roy
Orbison, sounds so right here—and that’s pretty high praise for any movie.
For Love of the Game
is rated PG-13 for language and perhaps a little non-violent gore, but it sounds
pretty tame after some of the summer’s excesses. As you may have heard, Kevin
Costner’s full frontal nudity was cut, and that is a very good thing—the
cut, not the nudity. This is a good, relatively decent film about two good,
decent people whose characterizations develop in a few too many minutes over two
hours. More than once Billy Chapel is described as an old-fashioned kind of
player, one of those better than life, if not larger than life heroes that make
America’s favorite pastime such a favorite—somewhat like those two nice
guys, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who renewed our collective love of the game
last year.
Talk about old-fashioned
players. George C. Scott, a consummate craftsman and old-fashioned gentleman of
high integrity is no longer with us. Perhaps his best performance is one that
we’ve all heard about but never saw: his refusal to accept the Academy Award
for best performance by an actor for his handling of the title role of Patton
(1970). With memories of a consistently reliable actor like Scott and the
pleasures of a well-crafted film like For Love of the Game, there is no
lack of noble thoughts this week. I leave it to you to keep your feet dry as you
head for the video store to concoct your own retrospective of Scott’s career,
which you can find summarized at:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Scott,+George+C.
To celebrate The Game, here
is the site of all sites:
According to this site,
"There are currently 5828 unique links indexed in the categories below. If
you can't find what you're looking for, it probably doesn't exist."
Learn more at the Internet Movie Database
The Rovin' and Ravin' Film Reviews