The film is about golf, so technically it's a sports movie but it doesn't really act like one. A typical sports movie follows a predictable story line. A team or an athlete must overcome great odds to get to and eventually win the big game. You've seen it countless times before. This one however is far more concerned with the way the game is played than anything else. To care about how the game is played, you have to care about the characters involved in it. For that the movie has to hinge on good performances by the actors. See where I'm going with this?
Matt Damon plays Rannulph Junuh, a boy wonder golfer in Savannah, Georgia. Well, a boy wonder until he goes off to fight in World War I. He returns a shattered man and quits the game to crawl into a bottle. His girlfriend, Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron) inherits her father's golf course when he commits suicide. The course, which he sunk all his money into, is about to go under, unable to stay afloat in the Great Depression. Adele hits on the idea of an exhibition match between the two greatest golfers of the time, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagan, to attract attention and customers to the course.
The town eventually supports the idea but insists that a local golfer needs to take part. That means they have to try and convince Junuh to play. The redemption of Junuh is really the movie's backbone. Out of nowhere appears the caddie Baggar Vance (Will Smith) to shape up Junuh and help him find his true swing.
A lot of people are going to object to this movie, calling it manipulative and corny. That's pretty fair I would say. There are many movies that are more guilty of manipulating emotion than this one. It doesn't so much try and stir emotion as it tries to tell us to be true to ourselves. That is the lesson that Junuh needs to learn to get his swing back. More importantly it's what he needs to learn to exorcise the demons plaguing his mind. Yes you could call some of these ideas corny but that's only because they are ideas that have been around a long time. Sometimes those are the ideas that ring the truest.
Give director Robert Redford a lot of credit for shooting a beautiful movie. He finds great scenery and films it for maximum effect. It adds an almost dreamlike quality to the movie. That's particularly interesting considering the way that Baggar Vance appears and disappears in this movie. It makes you wonder what he was and if he was really there.
Smith does a good job with Vance. He keeps it quiet and exudes confidence in his role. That's what Junuh needs from his caddie since his own confidence is shot to hell. It's a quality performance which will hopefully lead to a variety of roles allowing Smith to stretch his wings.
Damon is solid, playing Junuh extremely nervous early on but gaining confidence as the movie progresses. His character has a nice arc through the story and he handles it well. Charlize Theron plays well as his former girlfriend. She's full of confusion regarding Junuh but buries it in her more immediate need to keep her course afloat. This is a strong woman who puts her personal needs aside to try and save the family business and perhaps the town too.
It's a movie that anyone should be able to enjoy but I bet that golfers will appreciate it a bit more. It gets to the heart of why people would ever play such a maddening game such as golf. The story makes the very valid point that golf isn't a game you can win so the most important thing is how you play it. That's what separates it from the typical sports movie, right up to its ending. Speaking as someone who plays a bit of golf (badly I might add), I found the film captures the essence of the game well.
Redford's films frequently seem to hearken back to a time when things were a bit simpler. Today we seem a lot more cynical so his films may be looked down on a bit for the themes they explore. That's a shame because Redford captures that time and feeling well. It's nice to see a movie like this that doesn't care much what you think of it. It's very confident in what it stands for and for that alone I can recommend it.
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