It's a solid pick.

Rating: 6/10 (8 October 2014)

Before I begin I have a confession to make; I'm a fan of the NFL or Gridiron as Australians know it. In fact I'm a huge fan and have been since I was a teenager. The simple explanation is some people love country music, some love Shakespeare well I love American Football and everything about it.
Over the years I've watched films about this sport on the field which shows owners, executives and coaches off the field but this film, Draft Day, is different. For the 50-odd players on a team their biggest day is the Super Bowl but for the hundreds of executives and coaches behind the scenes their biggest day of the year is Draft Day because similar to the beating of a butterfly wing it can have massive repercussions on the future.
NFL is about parity. They want every game to be as competitive as possible. There's an old saying in the NFL which goes, "on any given Sunday in football any team can win" (its also the name of an Olive Stone football film from a decade ago). To ensure this happens and avoid one or two teams forever dominating the game the NFL brings the best new players from college and distributes them to the worst teams first. With 32 teams in the league, the team with the very worst record last year gets the first pick the next year so they potentially improve themselves by adding the best young player in the country. The second worst team gets the second best and so on until last years champions get the last pick. There are seven rounds but the first round is the most important.
Does that make sense or am I talking another language? It can get even more complicated than that because teams can trade picks to move positions up and down the draft and this is what our star Kevin Costner has to do as the Cleveland Browns General Manager Sonny Weaver Jnr. The Browns had success back in the 60's but have had very little to cheer about since then in fact they have been so awful, incompetent and success-starved are referred to by some sources as "A Factory of Sadness".
The conflict in our story comes from Sonny wanting a defensive player but the Browns coach Denis Leary wants a running back while eccentric owner Frank Langella is demanding a superstar Quarterback but they can't get them all with the seventh pick. Everything is on the general manager Sonny to make the impossible happen on this day with the clock ticking as well as dealing with his workmate slash girlfriend Jennifer Garner and his difficult mother Ellen Burstyn.. who's husband the esteemed former coach of the Browns Sonny Weaver died in the last week. Talk about your tough days at the office? The film is well directed by Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters 1&2 and Kindergarten Cop). He draws humour, drama and sincerity from his actors and keeps the pace rolling until the climactic moments. Because executives, players, coaches and managers are in constant communication there are dozens of phone conversations in this film so the producers came up with some very original and ingenious ways to play with these scenes.
As a longtime football fan I really enjoyed Draft Day but I would. If you like modern sport of any kind and appreciate that the top levels are really businesses or corporations now then you will get something from this movie. If you're not into sport but can enjoy a film which is part underdog story, part mystery then perhaps you should pick Draft Day.