Movie Reviews
It has been more than a month since I have seen a movie in theaters. I am sorry for the long delay, but schedules have obscured actual activities over that period of time. So, now it is time to talk about “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” This is Bill Paxton’s second film as a director. His first was “Frailty,” a superior horror/thriller that centered on the tensions between a father and a son. Although “The Greatest Game Ever Played” is a black-and-white, stark opposite of “Frailty,” it has some of the same lessons to teach us.
Here again is a movie with a father-son relationship tying it to the ground. The son is Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBouf) a poor nineteen-or-twenty-year-old at the turn of the century who has made his money, up to this point, caddying for professional golfers on a course near his house. We see him as a child mimicking his idols in his bedroom at midnight hitting a golf ball into a tin mug over and over again.
His father, still enticed by the American dream of working hard endlessly, discourages Francis’s progression in golf. He’d much rather Francis make his living doing an honest day’s work instead of hoping for the best in a silly game of golf.
It isn’t a surprise to see this Disney-produced film begin as a formula picture. Skipping the opening scene (which could’ve been uninteresting, but charmed me) we move through a portrait of a poor immigrant family, hard-working, but a little confused on what makes one happy. Eight-or-nine-year-old Francis aspires to be something more than a caddy and begs to go see one of the pros. His father forbids it, but his mother sneaks him out. And so the seed is planted.
What happens in the rest of the film is old substance being legitimately enhanced by over-the-top style. Paxton and his cinematographer achieve some impossible shots, most of which are quite successful in their quest of drawing us in closer. Others are not so lucky. (There is a slow-motion shot of a golfer teeing off. As the club hits the ball, we get extremely close to the ball and see a ladybug perched on top of it. The ball launches off the ground and a little later the ladybug is seen flying safely away. The ladybug looks entirely fake, and so the whole shot fails.)
But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was surprised also by how well “The Greatest Game...” pulled me in. Paxton directs his characters with (almost too much) confidence, hoping that they will deliver. LaBouf is a natural, quite simply. I don’t like that cliché, but it’s very true. His Ouimet is strong-willed and dynamic; able to grab our total attention with a glance of his eyes at another character. Such is the case with a fantastic sequence near the end of the film when Ouimet exchanges eye contact with his top rival. In that one look LaBouf expels emotions of fear and rivalry, and yet also some sort of weird friendliness toward the man.
Paxton, although in love with too many impossibilities, has made a solid film free of R-rated jargon and C-grade corniness. And as the father and son segment concludes at the end of the film, the father has had perhaps too much of a character change too quickly, but it makes for some great drama. Heck, this whole movie does. ***