“For Love of the Game”
"For Love of the Game" (PG-13)Kevin Costner plays Billy Chapel, a great Major League Baseball player who is bound for the Hall of Fame.
However Chapel is struggling through the end of a brilliant 19-year career and his Detroit Tigers team — much like the real-life Tigers — is terrible.
The team is sold and the new owners want to trade Chapel — a life-long Tiger — to the San Francisco Giants.
What follows is Chapel struggling to come to terms with the trade or possible retirement.
Meanwhile, his girlfriend also tells him she's leaving for England.
Talk about a bad day.
The entire movie basically takes place in Chapel's final game — the last game of the season — and flashes between the game situations against the N.Y. Yankees to his memories of his girlfriend, played by Kelly Preston.
DM: Costner knows baseball movies and this is definitely a baseball movie.
Unfortunately there is also a love story mixed in.
Had the movie stuck with the actual game-situation pieces it would have been a striking look into the mind of what a pitcher goes through on game day.
The myriad of thoughts and actions that go through the mind while on the mound are amazing.
There is some great game moments which make this movie enjoyable.
Vin Scully, who has perhaps the greatest baseball voice ever, calls the play-by-play and often under utilized character actor John C. Reilly is again very enjoyable to watch as Costner's aging catcher.
The other aspect I thought was well done was the way the movie showed how Costner poured everything he had into making himself the greatest pitcher in baseball while ignoring his relationship with his girlfriend while Preston gave everything she had to their relationship.
That pretty much sums up real life in many cases.
But in the end "For Love of the Game" is very, very predictable with all of the flashback people coming into play in the final, extremely predictable will-he-or-won't-he throw a no-hitter game. (If you've seen any of the trailers on TV you should already know the answer to that one.)
While watchable and interesting to baseball lovers, the relationship aspect of the movie is uninteresting and unoriginal, and it might disappoint viewers.
Score: DM 50