Sports movie buff

There has always been something magical about how Hollywood has been able to portray sports figures as mythical and flawed beings who so happen to break barriers other mortals find impossible. My one lament is that I have yet to see a local movie able to faithfully recreate the transformation of these modern heroes. Perhaps it’s the production cost, particularly if it would be a period film. And naturally, the price of hiring thousands of extras to re-enact their greatest triumphs would get the thumbs-down from local producers who only cater to the Filipino community and not a global audience.

Summer is little over a month away, and having a list of great sports movies to catch on cable, DVD or (hopefully legal) download would be very handy. But what makes a great sports movie?

First, of course, is realism. The actors have to look like athletes, and the settings have to look real. You can’t have a Depression era flick with modern cars zooming by in the background. One minor flaw of the otherwise tremendous high school football film “Remember the Titans” was a reference to the New York Jets’ formation, which did not yet exist during that time. Nor can you have a left-handed baseball player batting right-handed, as what happened in “Field of Dreams”.

Secondly, you have to keep to the story. This is where “Ali” famously triumphed, despite the weak acting of Will Smith. The film built up to the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” and used it as the climax.

Third, writers avoid flexing their muscles at the expense of the real athlete’s life. This is what happens when you fuse fantasy with reality. And yet, movies do this all the time:

“Blue Chip”, “Like Mike” and “Space Jam” among them. On the other side of the fence, even the “Rocky”

sequels tried to incorporate real people like Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and failed miserably. Adam Sandler, for his part, has made a whole bunch of horrible and moderately entertaining sports parodies over the years, “Happy Madison”, “The Waterboy”, and “The Longest Yard”. The original version of “The Longest Yard, with Burt Reynolds (who also appears in the Sandler version) was a solid piece of writing that made audiences sympathize with a lowlife. The new one was simply done for laughs.

Sadly, writers and critics often pan movies simply because they’re about sports personalities, and therefore, their lives can’t be realistically portrayed. Even Time magazine’s list of 100 All-Time Movies listed only one sports film, “Raging Bull”, Martin Scorsese’s powerful biography of world middleweight champion Jake LaMotta. Yes, the movie (filmed in black and white) was very truthful, and Robert De Niro gave an Oscar-winning tour as the Bronx Bull, even gaining 60 pounds in his metamorphosis as the older LaMotta. But it is very strange that, for its only sports movie pick, Time would select one with a lead character who had no redeeming values.

In recent years, there have been many interesting sports movies. In theaters now is “127 Hours”, the real-life story of adventurer Aron Ralston, and the tragedy that propelled him to greater heights as a mountaineer, diver, explorer. It tells the tale of how he fell into a crevice, was wedged into it with almost no food and very little water, in a place where people did not pass. Ralston had to make the huge decision to forcibly part with a limb in order to stay alive. James Franco gives a surprising performance as Ralston, and Danny Boyle plays up the internal dialogue that Ralston went through very effectively. There was also last December’s “The Fighter”, the true story of boxing half-brothers “Irish” Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, where we see a drawn, skinny Christian Bale playing the troubled older sibling of acting lightweight Mark Wahlberg. Prior to that, we’ve also seen great performances in boxing films like 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby”, Hilary Swank’s second Oscar nod. This stripped down tale of hardship, directed by and featuring Clint Eastwood, was often painful to watch, more so when, just on the brink of ultimate success, Swank’s Maggia Fitzgerald is paralyzed by a foul punch, and ultimately is euthanized by Eastwood’s Frankie Dunn. Another recent success was “Cinderella Man” with Russell Crowe recreating down and out heavyweight boxing champion James Braddock. Crowe had tremendous support from Renee Zellweger here.

Of course, boxing and basketball movies play well in the Philippines, although we are a small market in Asia. So recent film as like “Glory Road” (2006), and “Coach Carter”, based on real people or not, did reasonably well. Even the documentary of LeBron James’s Akron, Ohio high school squad “More Than a Game” has sold well on DVD here.  

Many writers and critics are divided over what should be the best sports movie of all time. Some laud the first “Rocky” film, mostly because of Sylvester Stallone’s writing and the plausibility of having an unknown contender being given a shot at the world heavyweight champion. The back story of the film has also become legend, more so when it won the Oscar for Best Picture for 1976. Stallone insisted on playing the lead role, and the studio gave him a measly P1,000,000 to make the movie. Sadly, the sequels, although technologically superior, deteriorated. Jaded viewers find some amusement in the inclusion of other sports heroes like Hulk Hogan in the follow-ups.

“Hoosiers”, the fictionalized account of little Hickory High School (shown in the Philippines in 1986 as “Best Shot”), ranks high on the list. Gene Hackman, who was reluctant to take the role, carved it in his own image. The sports action was also well shot, except that, at one point, you lose count of how many players Hickory actually had. It was a minor mistake, but noticeable because it was a sports movie, and that mattered.

Here in the Philippines, athletes and sports are just used as a vehicle to hook audiences. FPJ did a sincere attempt at making Efren “Bata” Reyes an actor who was playing, well, a pool player. The king of action also recruited a platoon of PBA players to play taxi drivers in another movie. At least, that was better than the many parodies and comedies that downgrade our pro stars into bumbling varsity athletes.

Down the road, expect more films to be made about sports celebrities.

Hollywood simply isn’t as creative as it used to be. That’s why there are dozens of movies based on comic books, remakes and sequels out on the market. We look forward to the day when American mainstream movie producers will take a hard look at creating movies about Filipino athletes like Manny Pacquiao, Flash Elorde, Pancho Villa, Onyok Velasco, Efren Reyes, Paeng Nepomuceno, and their generation. There is a wealth of material out there.