Draft Day Review

In movies, you somewhat have a gentleman's agreement as far as audiences buying into your premise. If you aren't offering a re-creation of everyday life, you have a certain amount of time to establish your concept in a way that lets the audience buy into certain contrivances. Superhero movies are so popular because they do this well, teasing out the supernatural or science fiction elements at a steady drip. And romantic comedies, which almost always star impossibly beautiful and charismatic people who wouldn't ever have romantic trouble in reality, usually get a leg out in depicting their lead characters as being flawed like the Bard’s vision of Denmark. When you buy the premise through a filmmaker's persuasion, you've ensured that you're going to be along for the ride, no matter how bumpy.

In Ivan Reitman's Draft Day, the story pivots on an event so unlikely that it's borderline fantasy.

The film follows Sonny Weaver Jr., an embattled general manager for the NFL's Cleveland Browns, a hapless franchise that will be picking seventh overall in that day's NFL Draft. Weaver, not so much played by Kevin Costner as worn like a comfortable shawl, is facing an ultimatum: make a big personnel splash on the day of the draft or he's fired. Frank Langella is the owner, an avuncular type who convinces Weaver, and the audience, that doing so isn't really the act of wizardry that it is. We buy it because Langella and Costner are both terrific, and because there's the sliver of a chance this owner is simply looking for an excuse to fire his top man. So far, so good.

On that morning, however, Weaver receives an unlikely phone call from the Seattle Seahawks' offices. It's draft day, and Weaver seems casually concerned about who the team will select with that pick, but a phone call from any other team would be an immediate priority. In this case, Seattle happens to have the number one pick in the draft, with a franchise-changing talent named Bo Callahan the consensus top choice. Somehow, Weaver answers this call with the same immediacy that that Costner probably uses on laundry day.

And this is where the plausibility sirens come up. The Seattle execs, who have no real opinion on Callahan negative or otherwise, offer Weaver the number one pick. It's exceedingly rare that any team trades away their first overall pick, particularly if there's an athlete available like Callahan, spoken about in hushed tones as if he was the sport’s new savior. Could such a trade happen on draft day? It's possible, but highly unlikely. Weaver, who receives maybe ten or fifteen phone calls during the day (most GM's would have a headset and take hundreds of calls), doesn't seem in any rush to get a once-in-a-lifetime talent like Callahan. He hems and haws, then opts to deal away the seventh pick and first round choices over the next two years in exchange for the pick. Costner's talent is that he makes everything look easy. But he's not talented enough to make running a sports franchise with the top pick on draft day as easy as spreading butter on toast, which it seems to be.

Weaver saves his own job with the move, but stops short on committing to Callahan. The audience does as well, as this is telegraphed by Reitman's broad strokes. Weaver's ear belongs to a brash potential rookie played by Chadwick Boseman, a charismatic prospect who is seen on the other end of the phone playing with his screen-ready kids. But Callahan, a generically-handsome slab of whiteguy, hangs out in hotel rooms with an overprotective agent (Sean Combs), delivering athlete koans practically read off a Quarterback Cliché calendar. A third player sounds talented as well, but the film gives him no recognizable traits, other than the fact that his father is his representation: if you're eager to see Terry Crews be misused in another big Hollywood movie, congrats: he has about four lines of dialogue.

The film makes a conscious decision to take reality off the table when Cleveland's scouts are suddenly befuddled in observing the nooks and crannies of Callahan's game, as if the whole sport hadn't memorized the attributes of everyone's number one pick by now. And that's fine, since most of what sports executives do is boring: there's miles of footage to watch, dozens of texts to respond to, and a lot of going to certain websites and hitting refresh. One of the more plausible elements of the picture is Denis Leary's Coach Penn, who is absolutely infuriated that Weaver parted with multiple draft picks in order to pick Callahan, who plays the same position as the team's best player. You can feel the fiery Leary straining against the PG-13 rating to say something to a GM manager that is probably torpedoing everyone's career.

That's the biggest issue with this film, ultimately: the mundane truth about the draft is instead replaced by subplot shenanigans. Weaver's main issue with Callahan seems to be that he's got all the talent in the world, but seems like a bit of an unlikable tool; surely Callahan would be the first jerk to also become a game-changing jock! And what's Weaver to do with Callahan considering his own quarterback is fully healed from a bad injury and ready to go? There's also a girl, always a girl: Jennifer Garner's Ali is pregnant, and Weaver's got to balance her position with the team and her position in his life. Fortunately, she's super-capable at her job, and determined to focus on the draft pick at hand. This is one of those movies that thinks it’s earning feminist points by having the female character simply want and strive for what the dudes pursue.

Reitman has been making disposable studio product for a long time now, and we're more than 21 years after his last truly enjoyable movie, the political fantasy Dave. And this film shows that his rhythms and flavor hasn't yet made it into the 21^st century. Fitting, considering a few Twitter mentions are the only thing that make Draft Day seem like its not a script from 1986. Reitman's simply in no rush, and his lackadasical approach doesn't seem to reveal any interest in the reality of the milieu, nor does it seem concerned with supplying any dramatic intrigue to the event. Everyone we meet stays the person they seem to be: Weaver the casual iconoclast, Callahan the dim quarterback, Ali the steely vet, Penn the snarling pessimist.

At least Reitman is able to gin up some suspense with the finale, when Weaver inexplicably becomes some sort of football wizard and starts to manipulate fellow GMs like a Jedi mind trick. It's the payoff to the film, and as such, it plays briskly and humorously with Costner slyly revealing he's by far the smartest one in the room. His movie star charisma and wily smirk own the film as the picks start flying and the wheeling and dealing occurs. If you're still awake by then, you might actually love it.

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