Second Round Draft Pick is no Moneyball

Rating: 6/10 (11 April 2014)

Kevin Costner is no stranger to sports themed movies. The Tin Cup, Bull Durham, For the Love of the Game star has stared in five separate sports films and now rounds that number to an even six with the football themed Draft Day directed by Ghostbuster's helmer Ivan Reitman.
Taking on a role more his age (Costner is a football yard short of 60), Costner plays Sonny Weaver Jr., the General Manager of the Cleveland Browns in the NFL. The action picks on NFL Draft Day, the day in which 200+ young budding stars get drafted by big league teams in a huge televised event taking place in New York City.
Sonny's Cleveland team was a lowly 6-10 the season before – largely due to the injury to their star quarterback. The Browns are given the 7th round draft pick on draft day, but pressures from Brown's team owner (Frank Langella) and an aggressive offer from the Seattle Seahawks to swap the number 1 pick for future options leave Sonny with only hours to think of both his legacy and what is best for the city's revered team.
The film all takes place within the 24 hours on draft day and a running clock that appears a handful of times during the film reminds us that the time is ticking and decisions need to be made. Impeding such forward thinking are the films distractions which come in the form of two female characters with ties to Sonny. Jennifer Garner plays Ali, the love interest of Sonny and the lawyer and number cruncher who is responsible for keeping the Browns under the NFL salary cap. With the film only a few minutes aged, we learn that Ali is pregnant with Sonny's baby – a subplot that was hardly necessary to keep things moving. Also complicating things is Sonny's mother played by Ellen Burstyn. Sonny's father was a former Cleveland Brown's coach (fired by Sonny Jr. the year previous) and has recently passed away. Sonny's mother for reasons that were hard to understand considering she lived a life with football at the core of the family, decides that draft day is the day in which she wants Sonny to spend some time completing his father's last wishes as identified in his will.
Both female stories go nowhere and could easily have ended up on the cutting room floor. Instead, in a weak attempt to connect with a female audience, the two characters are awarded ample screen time to emote and distract Sonny on what is arguably the most difficult and focused day of his career.
When Sonny is not tripping over the estrogen pitfalls, he is struggling with his coach (Dennis Leary) and working the phones discussing trade possibilities with Jacksonville, Buffalo and Kansas City in an attempt to save the city the embarrassment of selling the golden goose for a few magic beans.
It is when Sonny is working his draft magic that the movie is at its best. His calls to and from potential and existing players had an authentic feel and the chaos of draft day is captured with tense complexity and legacy importance.
Draft Day wants to be football's answer to baseball's Moneyball. But the Aaron Sorkin written baseball film starring Brad Pitt had rocket-fire dialogue that catapulted the film to an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. Draft Day instead is fluff, but it's good fluff. Costner consistently makes every film to which he is involved better than it should be and Reitman is smart to give appropriate cameos (Roger Goodall, Bernie Kozar, Jim Brown), he keeps the spotlight on his star heaving the film on Costner's shoulders in an attempt to score a box office touchdown.
Draft Day was a fun distraction. Browns fans will likely enjoy a fantasy film of their team making right decisions (the Browns have not made the NFL playoffs since 2002), and football fans should find valued entertainment in the behind the scenes peak into the day of a General Manager. But film fans hoping for a Moneyball or something smarter than Draft Day's trailers have revealed should look elsewhere.