Kevin Costner stars in a dull look at a dull tradition within America’s favorite sport. 

Sonny Weaver (Kevin Costner) has struggled to make the Cleveland Browns a successful team ever since being hired as their general manager. Desperate to save football in Cleveland, he makes a wild deal to secure the #1 selection in the NFL Draft. But the remaining hours leading up to the draft will test his ability to make decisions and help build a winning team.

Too bad the movie’s super boring.
It’s well made, and has some great stars, but Draft Day is a flat movie with by-the-numbers storytelling and stale characters. Every plot point can be spotted a mile ahead, and the premise itself is just uninteresting… You have to be a pretty big football fan to find most aspects of this film entertaining.

Director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Dave, Stripes) tries his best to fill the movie with drama and heart, succeeding on a few occasions, but it’s just not there. Draft Day is a stiff soap opera with odd pacing and cringe-worthy dialogue. Kevin Costner shows little passion or charisma for almost two hours, and a number of far-fetched moments pull viewers out of the story. Despite its good intentions, Draft Day is a bust.

+ Quick-paced editing style
+ Have to admit it’s more entertaining than any movie about football contracts has a right to be

– Kevin Costner gives an apathetic performance
– Tired storytelling tropes
– Entirely predictable
– Cringe-worthy dialogue
– Full of unnecessary plot tangents
– Few characters worth caring about

Draft Day is a tired and cliched sports movie, full of uninteresting people and uninteresting stories. It tries to bring drama and heart, but is mostly dragged down by its own apathetic filmmaking and sense of pretentiousness. Whatever Draft Day has tried to do as a sports movie about player contracts and crafting a team around personal values, Moneyball did first. And much better. 

Draft Day is rated PG-13 for “brief language and sexual references.” The language is pretty frequent, and a woman’s back can be seen as she showers. A few characters offer up guesses at how many women a popular quarterback sleeps with every week. Older teenagers and up. 

© Matt Tory, 2014.