A Sports Drama with Complex themes....

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2007)

Imagine that! After all the sports films you've seen about idiots who booze and get laid... Or short small people fighting against tall odds... Don't you get tired of it? I don't like sports films. They're an over-worn compilation of the same old characters and plots. So I was hesitant to watch this film... But when it came on AMC a few weeks back, I decided to give it a go... My dad walked in and affectionately called it, "that baseball movie." Finally, a sports movie with a sense of universal themes and archetypes. The theme of how our lives are laced throughout with the same haunting mistakes... How we tend to go back in to them again... Even though we've already payed the price... And how that price will always haunt us and leave it's mark on everything we do... And yet, how that's a part of life... And maybe what makes us a true hero, without those marks we wouldn't be the hero we are.
This is a sports fantasy... (Though the film calls in to question its own fantastic elements and makes you wonder if they aren't just "natural")... A myth full of archetypes... I'll never understand people who could prefer the cliché, "classic" sports films... It's a real damn shame.
Beautiful, mythic film.