Steeeeeeeeeeeee-rike!

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2014)

'For Love of the Game' combines two stories: One I had a genuine interest in and the other a tired wheezy old genre piece that I've seen a million times. Sad thing is, it's the latter that eventually takes over completely.
The movie stars Kevin Costner (who until now had never been in a bad sports movie) as Billy Chapel, a 40 year-old pitcher who's game has seen better days. He's close to retirement and as the movie opens he has set an elegant dinner for his girlfriend who never shows. Even worse (and these things just conveniently happen on the same day) he has been traded and the team has been sold.
I might have been genuinely interested in the story of an over-the-hill pitcher and his struggle to hold onto the talent that he once had and that alone is what drew me to the movie. But director Sam Raimi hammers together a tired old love story complete with all the nuts and bolts that no bad love story is ever without.
There is the obligatory scene in which the two meet-cute in an unusual place (by the roadside when her car breaks down). She doesn't know who he is and knows virtually nothing about baseball (would it be too much to ask the screenwriters if the hero could fall for a sports nut?). The fall madly in love before she loses confidence in him and a huge misunderstanding leads to one of those big emotional scenes in which it looks like she will leave him forever to take a job overseas. Does she? I guarantee that you have seen this movie before and know the outcome.
The movie is a surprise to me. Costner has starred in plenty of bad movies but until this movie he has never starred in a bad sports movie especially baseball after gems like 'Bull Durham' and 'Field of Dreams'. He's made his mark as box office poison in the sci-fi genre but I hope this doesn't mean that that reputation is moving over to the sports movie arena.
I'm also surprised that this movie comes from Sam Raimi. In 1998 he made the hard-edged 'A Simple Plan', the story of three men who find $4,000,000 in a plane crash and struggle to keep it a secret which leads to distrust and tragedy. That movie was about human nature and never for once did we anticipate where it was going.
There are two scenes in 'For Love of the Game' in which Costner is on the mound and is able to block out everything around him by 'Focusing on the mechanism'. Perhaps that logic should have been applied to the screenplay.