Slightly above-average film with limited appeal

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2015)

As much as it pains me to write, this movie is not all that great. I bought the blu-ray disc because it had so much going for it: it is about the Cleveland Browns football organization; it entails a draftee from the Ohio State Buckeyes, and it was apparently the previously top un-filmed script on blcklst.com, a website for film scripts. Sounds really, really good paper, which is why I was left a little flat after watching it. I think there were a couple reasons for this. One, the movie isn't at all about the triumph of the Cleveland Browns on the football field. Rather, it is about a victory for the Browns in (as the title of the film would suggest) the NFL draft wars. Exciting stuff? Uh, no. Contrast that with "Major League," the beloved movie from 1989 about the Cleveland Indians baseball team. That movie, much to the delight of us Ohioans, culminated with Tribe victories on the baseball diamond. "Draft Day" ends as the new draftees get set to take the field with the rest of the Browns. This is somewhat akin to what "The Avengers" would have been like if the film had ended immediately after Nick Fury assembled the superhero team: a little anti-climactic, to say the least. Another reason "Draft Day" fails to generate much excitement is that the majority of the film is predicated on phone calls. Guys in Cleveland are talking to guys in Seattle, Kansas City, Madison and elsewhere. Who wants to watch guys doing business over the phone for two hours? Even though the filmmakers acknowledge this and did some innovative things with editing, it is just a bad way to forward the action of the movie. One more aspect of the movie I found a little hard to swallow was the enthusiasm the draft picks show for playing in Cleveland. I was more than a little incredulous: I mean, no one really wants to be a Cleveland Brown. We fans love the team, but let's be honest about that. No other fans deserve the moniker "die-hard" more than Cleveland Browns fans. The Browns haven't won a championship in fifty years and, for all we know, it likely won't for another fifty years. We hope for the best, but realistically cannot expect our Browns to attract a following outside Ohio. Despite the aforementioned infractions, I more or less enjoyed the movie. Because I live in a suburb of Columbus, where the Buckeyes play, and have been a fan of the Cleveland Browns since the days of Brian Sipe, Ozzie Newsome and Dave Logan, the appeal of this film was obvious. How can one really go wrong with a film about the Buckeyes and the Browns, has unprecedented access to the NFL and even features cameos by Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar? I recommend the film really only for die-hard Browns and Kevin Costner fans.