Draft Day–Movie Review

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2.5 Stars
Draft Day posterDraft Day (IMDB) is a disappointing football movie. It’s a Kevin Costner vehicle and an extended commercial for the NFL.

Costner plays Sonny Weaver Jr., the General Manager of a fictionalized version of the Cleveland Browns. He has to deal with a girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) who looks much too young for him, an arrogant head coach (Denis Leary) who has his own ideas about how the team should be run, and a sniveling young intern (Griffin Newman).

On the morning before the NFL draft Sonny has a meeting with the team’s owner (Frank Langella), a billionaire who knows everything about marketing and little about football. The owner wants him to do whatever is necessary to draft Bo Callahan (Josh Pence), the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and general media darling. Every instinct tells Sonny that Callahan is overrated and that the cost of getting him will be ruinous to the team’s future. Nevertheless he lets himself be bullied into making the necessary trades.

Knowing that he has made a disastrous mistake, Sonny spends most of the rest of the movie glowering and snarling and generally acting like a jerk to his subordinates, family and girlfriend.

However he comes through in the end Show ▼

Because, after all, he is Kevin Costner.

The movie is festooned with NFL logos not to mention NFL personalities playing themselves. I hope they feel that they got their money’s worth.