Movies that are based on sporting events are not my favorite. They’re rather boring.
Of course I’ve never seen Slap Shot, the original Bad News Bears or any other sports movie dating back to about the mid-’80s. Instead I’ve seen Major League, two of the three Mighty Ducks installments, Varsity Blues, and so on and so forth. The formula is the same and the result is the same – it’s lackluster. However, I found things to be very different when viewing The Greatest Game Ever Played.
The Greatest Game Ever Played is a true story about the golf tournament that took place in 1913. The movie chronicles the journey of Harry Vardon (played by Stephen Dillane) and Francis Ouimet (played by Shia LeBeouf). From the moment we are told that “golf is a gentleman’s sport” to Francis’ first time on the course, to the 1913 U.S. Open to the credits, the viewer is taken on a surprising ride that includes heartache, laughter, excitement and all in between.
The movie takes all of these emotions and spreads them throughout the movie, making the viewer feel what they want to feel at the right moment. All this is thanks to director Bill Paxton (Aliens and Twister).
He keeps the viewers on the edge of their seats during the golf sequences. With ground camera angles that look up at the actors, camera angles that travel right behind the ball when it is hit and an insightful view of what a golfer may see while playing the game, he portrays the game in a way that makes it fresh and exciting; a far cry from what we see on television.
What Paxton also does that is different is his presentation in the open credits. It almost looks like something out of a Franz Ferdinand music video.
Unlike typical sports movies, the viewer isn’t sure what is going to happen. I myself, didn’t look into the 1913 U.S. Open, and therefore had no idea how it would end. The reason for this is that the movie doesn’t just have one main character, it has two (and one could argue even three).
As said earlier, the movie follows the events of Vardon and Ouimet leading up to the U.S. Open and what follows. The obvious hero is Ouimet, but there is no real villain, in a sense. The viewers find themselves feeling bad for Vardon and almost rooting for him, so that he could prove the people he works for wrong.
For Ouimet, the chance to even play is an obstacle, for his family is poor and very few people, including his father, don’t really believe in him.
The formula chosen for this sports movie works fantastically. It doesn’t focus on one person of the team and it doesn’t have a typical beginning – the everything is working, the fall, the re-group-and-win blueprint – typical sports movies have.
There is a reason why sports movies are few and far in between; there dull, boring, and old. Who didn’t know James Van Der Beek was going to win in Varsity Blues? Who didn’t know the ducks were going to pull it out?
The Greatest Game Ever Played is different. Unless someone has looked up what happens, the viewer is left on the edge of their seat hoping for the best. The viewer is unsure of what is going to happen, given the track record of Vardon and the occasional slip ups from Ouimet. Paxton, in only his second directorial film, does a great job telling the story of two men in what is considered by many sports fans, many golfers and many sports journalists to be “the great game ever played.” HHHH

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