Written by: Noah Buschel
Directed by: Noah Buschel
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Paul Giamatti, Johnny Simmons
Rated: --/R
Plot:
An unorthodox sports psychologist helps a talented major league rookie pitcher who suddenly can't find the strike zone.
Verdict:
Really great acting from all three head liners, intimate directing, but an ending that will leave you feeling like something is missing. It tells a story about a talented athlete and a turbulent home life that warped his mind. Just as the conclusion is building, the movie ends. I appreciate that it bucks the trend of the Hollywood ending, but the preceding scene could have set up the ending and it doesn't. The omission of an ending doesn't detract from the story this tells, but this is just strange enough that it's going to alienate people.
It depends.
Review:
At first glance this looks like serious version of Kevin Costner's Bull Durham (1988) or Brendan Frasier's The Scout (1994) with a therapist instead of a grizzled veteran catcher and scout/agent respectively.
This jumps right into the movie without even a production company logo, with the therapist (Giamatti) and Hopper Gibson (Simmons) in a session. It's a great opening scene, inexplicably followed by ae title sequence set against a horrid floral print pattern.
I wondered how much actual baseball would be in this, and there isn't much. We get a couple of scenes where Hopper pitches and that's it. At least the movie gets its references correct with Nolan Ryan and Walter Johnson.
It even gets into the NCAA and the money it makes off of players. One character proposes getting rid of the draft, which is crazy. The movie uses this to show that Hopper just plays the game, he doesn't care about politics, but to address no draft, big market teams would sign most of the talent. The draft is for parity and competitive play.
The timeline bounces around from the therapist to Hopper's failure during a big league game to being scouted in high school. It's trying to create a stream of consciousness feel. It spends a lot of time at high school, more than I expected. I wondered if it was going to create a comparison of his life before being drafted, right after, and then now that his career is potentially in shambles. It doesn't do that. We see his life before the draft and then after he lost command of his pitches. We don't know what happened in the minors, but Hopper was successful in the major until he lost the ability to throw strikes.
We know he plays for Atlanta. The movie never mentions the club name. We later see him rehabbing and wearing a Gwinnet Bulls jersey. Gwinnett is a double A farm team in Georgia for Atlanta, though the movie claims the Bulls are in California.
Simmons does an amazing job as the movie explores living in the shadow of a father despite possessing more talent. This is a teen struggling with unfathomable pressure masquerading as a baseball movie. Hopper could have any insanely high paying profession and the arc could play out the same way. Baseball does make sense as there is a precedent of professionals losing the ability to throw strikes or to first base (Mark Wohlers, Chuck Knoblauch). This is often called the 'yips' and that is mentioned. Howard Glass as referenced in the film is not real.
Ethan Hawke's as Hopper's dad is a real piece of work, as advertised. It's not often you hate a character so completely so quickly. In a few minutes after returning, he throws a beer can at his son. I find it doubtful that he wouldn't have been arrested for abuse.
This character threw his life away and is living through his son. He takes out his disappointment and frustration on his son, but also wants to take all the credit forHopper's success.
Buschel takes a very gentle look at Hopper. I don't know how else to describe the directing. This is a character study about an extremely talented kid and his turbulent home life. His dad warped him. The direction is impressive from holding shots, to the focus, and the editing. Some scenes are almost edited to misdirect, but it's so small that you could almost miss it.
One of the best scenes is in the therapist's office as Hopper considers what he really wants in life and admits his team signed the wrong guy. It's a great scene that's directed and acted very well.
The ending is going to annoy a lot of people. It feels like it's building to an emotional payoff, something the movie has been building since the first scene. In the middle of the scene it just cuts to black. Where is the rest of the movie? I had to make sure the DVD didn't freeze and that something didn't go wrong. It ended in mid scene.
I'm left searching for the ending. I get enough to make some guesses about how this concludes, but I'm still at a loss. In essence Hopper had to face his dad one last time. It was a chance for them both to open up, which is completely uncharacteristic. The movie could have set this up better with the therapist laying out what Hopper needs to do and let us know this is part of the road to recovery. We can glean that, but still the final scene stop almost in mid sentence.
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