Film review: Draft Day scores even with non-fans of American football
It's been 15 years since Kevin Costner was last in a sports film, and 30 years since Ivan Reitman made . And it's been a long time since either of them have hit anything out of the ball park in a cinematic sense.
DRAFT DAY
Starring: Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Dennis Leary, Frank Langella
Director: Ivan Reitman
Category: IIA
It's been 15 years since Kevin Costner was last in a sports film, and 30 years since Ivan Reitman made . And it's been a long time since either of them have hit anything out of the ball park in a cinematic sense.
But with their first American football-themed outing, Reitman and Costner show that they still have some of the old magic that marked their winning films of the 1980s and '90s like and (for Costner), and and (for Reitman).
In , Costner plays Sonny Weaver Jnr, the Cleveland Browns general manager going into "a day when lives are changed" under the shadow of his recently deceased and revered coach father, Sonny Senior. The NFL's 32 teams have the pick of 224 hopeful young aspirants and Sonny has a chance to assemble the team he believes will bring Cleveland its first Super Bowl win in years.
Sonny starts Draft Day with a game plan, but he's told by the team's owner, Anthony Molina (Frank Langella), to go for Bo Callahan (Josh Spence), a star quarterback from the University of Wisconsin.
That's even though Sonny and the Browns' coaching staff — including its hot-tempered head coach (Denis Leary) — believe that the Browns already have good quarterback options for the upcoming season.
