Eastern Carolina Style

Draft Day

Rated PG-13

for brief strong language and sexual references

Every year the National Football League uses its annual draft to invite 224 young men to join its ranks. To be drafted into the league you have to be one of the best football players in the world. If you want to be drafted in the top 10 you have to be one of the best of the best. If you think you are good enough to be number 1, you had better be….perfect.

Draft Day is a day in the life on a fictitious Cleveland Browns General Manager named Sonny Weaver Jr; played by Kevin Costner. Weaver is tasked by the owner of the team, played by Frank Langella, to “make a splash” in the 2014 draft or face being fired. Weaver must navigate personal and professional obstacles to focus on the task of building the future of the Cleveland Browns football team while giving the owner the flashy moves and impact he so desperately desires.

Draft Day is a movie endorsed by the NFL; that is a detail that cannot be ignored. If you know anything at all about Roger Goodell, and his run as the Commissioner of the NFL, then you know he will not allow any “bad” light to be shown on the league. He is going to “protect the shield” at all costs. That should be warning enough to temper your expectations for what you can expect from this movie.

There are two audiences that this movie is trying to capture, the football fan and the casual movie viewer. The football fan is going through a bit of withdrawal right now; there is no football on TV to satisfy the hunger. The casual movie goer just got treated to a baseball movie, that is somewhat similar, that turned out to be pretty good, Moneyball. Draft Day is in prime position to come in and offer a taste of football to the hungry fan, it can also give the casual movie goer an interesting story; sadly Draft Day fails to do a good job at accomplishing either. If it was a draft pick, it would be the “bust” that the main character Sonny Weaver is trying to avoid.

How does a movie about the NFL Draft go wrong? We are a football crazed society after all.

Here’s how you do it:

• You make the General Managers of the NFL look like poorly informed gamblers who rely on stooges that can barely tie their shoes for guidance.

• You take one of the GMs that you have already mentally crippled, throw in some mommy and daddy drama, a pointless love interest, and then cram all of that into a story that takes place in 13 hours.
• Oh yeah, don’t forget to include some of the most asinine draft moves of all time; it is supposedly about the NFL Draft and all.

Yep, sounds like a cluster to me too.

If there is a “good” part of the movie, it is in the actors themselves. They all did a good job in the roles that they were provided. Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary and Frank Langella make up the bulk of the cast. That lineup should make you go, “hey, this movie can be pretty good.” Sorry, it isn’t.

In the end, this movie should be nothing more than a marketing lead in for the real 2014 NFL Draft that is coming up later in the year. The story is too watered down with Lifetime Channel BS to be taken seriously as a movie about one of the most anticipated days in the manliest of sports. I say, re-edit the movie and eliminate all the hot garbage about secret romances and daddy issues and insert more “behind the scenes” perspective on the draft process itself. You might end up with a good movie.