Draft Day

UK view­ers might baulk at the notion of a film con­cerned entire­ly with the alien phe­nom­e­non of the NFL draft pick process. This involves a shiny-floored X‑Fac­tor-style stu­dio set-up as pink-faced execs with flat-tops host a nail­bit­ing day of Amer­i­can foot­ball play­er trad­ing. Direc­tor Ivan Reit­man neglects to offer a con­tex­tu­al crutch to his non-Amer­i­can cousins which explains what the hell is going in this glossy, admin­is­tra­tive far­ra­go, but it’s a tes­ta­ment to the innate dra­ma of the ​“event” that, improb­a­bly, it all ends up mak­ing total sense.

As head hon­cho of the under­achiev­ing foot­ball also-rans, the Cleve­land Browns, Son­ny Weaver Jr (Kevin Cost­ner) has been land­ed with a crater-sized prob­lem in that his team are pants, and tell-it-like-it-is shock jocks are call­ing for his pro­fes­sion­al balls on a plat­ter. And the sea­son hasn’t even start­ed. He’s also get­ting grief from Jen­nifer Gar­ner, the team’s accounts exec with whom he’s also secret­ly canoodling, and his nag­ging moth­er (Ellen Burstyn) who boasts a bizarre two-tone hair­style. In order to win over a fick­le pub­lic, Son­ny has to score big at draft day, and so makes a crazy, high-risk deal with rivals the Seat­tle Sea­hawks in order to get first dibs on the blond-haired, blue-eyed hot young thing, Bo Calla­han (Josh Pence).

The film involves lots of shots of men small-talk­ing on speak­er phones sur­round­ed by rooms of whis­per­ing flunkies stroking their chins, try­ing to get one over on each oth­er. By the half way point, things aren’t look­ing pret­ty for Son­ny as he realis­es that there may be more (or less) to Bo than on-pitch prowess. He needs to find a way to dis­cov­er whether Bo has heart. As Son­ny needs a man with heart. Reit­man opts for a supreme­ly hands-off direc­to­r­i­al approach, allow­ing the nat­ur­al charis­ma of his actors to shine through, and he par­tic­u­lar­ly cap­i­talis­es on Costner’s abil­i­ty to speechi­fy with­out let­ting the syrup flow too thickly.

Although the film is osten­si­bly about a sub­ject which many would find unap­peal­ing, the film could be read as a sober­ing exposé on how big busi­ness deals are made in front of tick­ing clocks and with the help of much brow-sweat­ing and gut instinct. As a micro­cosm for world geopol­i­tics and the way in which deal mak­ers are always ful­ly aware of their advan­tage over oth­ers (and their sub­se­quent will­ing­ness to ring com­peti­tors dry), it’s a film which shows how ruth­less peo­ple are in busi­ness and how suc­cess and fail­ure can hang on a the cor­rect into­na­tion of words and just the right, or just wait­ing to the exact right sec­ond to start that poten­tial­ly world-destroy­ing dialogue.