From now on, Kev, just act!

Rating: 9/10 (15 September 1999)

I saw a sneak preview of _For Love of the Game_ this week, and I was happily surprised. It immediately goes into my list of Top Ten Baseball Movies, along with (in no particular order) _Field of Dreams_, _Bull Durham_ (a Costner to Costner to Costner triple play!), _Eight Men Out_, _A League of Their Own_, _Bang the Drum Slowly_, Fear Strikes Out_, _The Bad News Bears_ and three others of your choice. (Anyone who nominates either Babe Ruth biopic, with William Bendix or John Goodman, will be ejected immediately and banned from the game for life.)
Costner plays an aging Tigers pitcher named Billy Chapel with very few strikes left in his sore arm. It is a couple of days from the end of the season, his record is 8-11, (though with an ERA in the low 3's, which would have made him an All-Star in the real major leagues this year!), he is starting a game at Yankee Stadium that means a lot to the Yankees and nothing to Detroit, and he has just been told the team has been sold and he will be traded once the season ends. Costner is athletic enough to play a baseball player convincingly (although they use a stand-in for some shots), and his acting range is better than he is given credit for these days. He can be romantic, funny, self-absorbed, and angry, though his most comfortable persona is stoic with just a hint of sarcastic spine, and this role seems written for him.
Perhaps surprisingly, I would say that less than a third of the film deals directly with baseball. Baseball is the framing story (literally -- the whole film is a series of flashbacks during a single game) for what proves to be an unconventional but believable romance. This is a great date movie: the guys will love the baseball scenes, and the gals will love how our sympathies are always with Kelly Preston's Jane (the love interest), at least after the relationship has begun in earnest.
Preston is fine as Jane, but the other supporting actors are better. Jena Malone (_Contact_, _Stepmom_) is superb as Jane's daughter Heather. John Reilly (_Boogie Nights_) has some of the best lines as Chapel's long-time friend and catcher. And J. K. Simmons (_Oz_, _Law & Order_) does his usual fine job making a small role utterly convincing as the Tigers' skipper.
The film uses special effects very well. When Chapel focuses on his pitching, the stands blur and the obnoxious fans (this is New York, after all) are suddenly muted. We really get the sense of what it means when athletes say they "block everything out."
All in all, this is a very satisfying film. Yes, the odds of a 40 year-old pitcher carrying a perfect game into the late innings (no spoilers here! you'll have to see it if you want to know if he gets that 27th out) are slim. But the odds of any pitcher throwing a perfect game at any time are astronomical. Baseball is the most serendipitous of sports, which is why it makes the best movies. In any case, Chapel's performance is far more believable than the superficially similar but oh-so-ridiculous one by Steve Nebraska in _The Scout_ (what was Albert Brooks thinking?).
A final note, and the explanation for my title. Costner truly is a fine actor. He is *not* a good writer or director. When he just acts, we get films like this. When he tries to do more, we get _Waterworld_. Curse the Academy for ever convincing him otherwise by rewarding that cheap knock off of _Little Big Man_ called _Plays with Camera_. I mean, _Dances with Wolves_. Please, Kevin, stick to acting -- For the Love of the Movies!