Draft Day - Movie Review

Draft Day.

Draft Day is a 2014 drama based around the 2014 NFL Draft. The football players depicted in the film are fictional although one running back is played by real life Houston Texan Arian Foster. The movie seems like a pretty big NFL commercial and considering the budget was $25 million, it wasn't too expensive especially considering the NFL collected $6 billion in revenue in 2013. Draft Day stars Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves, Man of Steel) and Jennifer Garner (Juno, Dallas Buyers Club). The film comes to us from director Ivan Reitman who brought us both of the Ghostbusters movies.

Plot: The premise of the film revolves around the general manager of the Cleveland Browns and his decisions on draft day. The Browns have the #7 pick in the draft and decide to trade their current 1st round pick along with the next 2 1st round picks to acquire the first overall pick in this draft from the Seattle Seahawks; this isn't a spoiler as it happens in the first 15 minutes of the movie. The fictional Bo Callahan is the unanimous first overall pick as said by the experts as the next Andrew Luck. The Cleveland GM then goes through the 12 hours up to the draft deciding what to do and whether or not Callahan is as sure of a thing as everyone thinks.

The Good: As a die-hard NFL fan this film naturally had some interest for me. It's well enough acted, no problems there but also no Oscar winners. The story is compelling enough but it's hard to see someone who doesn't like the NFL enjoying this movie. It's a good drama but it relies pretty heavily on intermediate knowledge of the NFL and some of its inner workings; that being said, since I love football I knew everything going on. The third act of the movie was pretty well executed and at parts, pretty intense. Once the draft starts the movie kicks into high gear and has by far the best moments of the movie.

The Bad: Not much really outside of it being really predictable. Once you get introduced to a few characters you can start to guess how everything's going to play out but there is a decent surprise at the end but not big enough to call it a twist. The characters themselves lack any real depth, they're pretty much cardboard cut outs of themselves and over the course of the near 2 hour movie no one really develops further than where they were the first time we meet them.

Overall: The problem with Draft Day isn't the story, the lackluster characters or the relatively boring 2nd act, the real problem with the movie is that it lacks real emotion. Once you finish the movie you're left underwhelmed feeling that this could've been done much better. Draft Day is the epitome of feeling indifference toward what you just watched, it's not so bad that it makes you angry nor it is it so good that it makes you cheer; it really just makes you shrug your shoulders and say "meh".

Rating: 2/5