Running Down a Dream: Into the Wind

As if sports weren’t inherently dramatic enough, the language we use when discussing them is often bloody with consequence. Teams facing elimination from the playoffs are said to be in “do or die” situations. NFL games that are tied after four quarters go into “sudden death” overtime. And fans who allow their happiness be dictated by the success of their favorite team are said to be “diehards.” It’s all overstatement, provided that no one has made a bet they can’t afford to lose, but it’s harmless. (Working in the NFL when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, I was puzzled by the insistence of some writers that it was now inappropriate to refer to a team’s draft-day strategy room as the “war room.” Were these people similarly uncomfortable with the football terms “blitz” and “gunner”? And, in our post-9/11 climate, where was the objection to the baseball terms “sacrifice fly” and “suicide squeeze”? But I digress.) Poetic enhancement is a sports tradition. Still, every now and then something comes along and reminds us of just how foolish these inflated terms really are, and of just how dramatic sports can be on their own. Into the Wind is that kind of reality check.

The first must-see entry in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series since The Two Escobars debuted in June, Into the Wind tells the story of Terry Fox, who in 1980 set out to do the unthinkable: run all the way across his native Canada at a rate of approximately 26 miles (one marathon) each day. A formidable task in its own right, Fox’s expedition was made all the more challenging because he was without the better part of his right leg, which had been amputated six inches above the knee three years earlier, after Fox had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Fox’s goal wasn’t just to cover the distance but to raise money for cancer research and to raise the spirits of cancer patients at the same time. He called his run the “Marathon of Hope,” and in doing so he not only grossly undersold the length of his journey but also the emotions it would stir in those who witnessed it. Directed by NBA guard (and fellow Canadian) Steve Nash and Ezra Holland, Into the Wind gracefully combines modern interviews, archival footage and narrated excerpts from Fox’s journal to bring to life the heroic quest of a 21-year-old man who in the true spirit of sports wanted to test himself, and who in the true spirit of life wanted to do before he died.

Modest Pleasure: The Town

As an actor, Ben Affleck is no Robert De Niro. As a director, he’s no Michael Mann. And so it should come as no surprise that The Town, a film about the leader of a band of heavily-armed bank robbers who puts a promising new romance at risk in the name of one last score, is no Heat, despite its many plot similarities. But that The Town doesn’t attempt to be Heat, and especially that it doesn’t attempt to outdo that classic macho opera, is what makes Affleck’s film a delightful success. Simply put, The Town is a movie with no delusions of grandeur that wins us over with its relative conservatism. In his second directorial effort, Affleck takes a clichéd and motivationally problematic screenplay (that he helped write) based on a novel by Chuck Hogan and fashions it into something familiarly and dependably entertaining. Rather than looking to dazzle us with narrative uniqueness (think: Inception) or with explosive tonnage (think: Michael Bay, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, etc.), Affleck bows out of the treacherous one-upsmanship arms race in order to let his film stand confidently yet humbly on two too often ignored pillars of success: setting and character.

The Town takes place in Boston, and more centrally in the neighborhood of Charlestown, and with the Bunker Hill memorial obelisk looming in the background of so many of cinematographer Robert Elswit’s long shots we can never forget that. In actuality, I’m sure a good number of the film’s exteriors were shot outside the state of Massachusetts, but to anyone except a Bostonian such technicalities are incidental. That The Town’s setting feels distinct is what matters. And with its clever appreciation of Boston’s horse-and-buggy-era city planning (more on that later) and it’s memorable race to and across the Charlestown Bridge, The Town does such a superb job of establishing its setting’s particular eccentricities that the film’s climactic chapter at Fenway Park feels a little like unnecessary (and trite) piling on. Then again, Fenway and its Red Sox are an indelible part of Boston’s identity, and so shooting there is an appropriate gesture for a film that repeatedly demonstrates a fondness for character. With Affleck’s Doug serving as the store-bought vanilla cake, providing an underwhelming yet inoffensive base layer, the film’s numerous supporting players deliver the decadent icing: from solid performances by John Hamm as the determined FBI agent and Rebecca Hall as the vulnerable love interest, to the just-shy-of-campy turn by Pete Postlethwaite as Charlestown’s crime boss, to the rousing performances by Jeremy Renner as a live-wire thug and Blake Lively as a single mom and neighborhood tramp whose dirty vivacity is remarkably tempting, even if you wouldn’t dare shake her hand without sliding into a pair of latex gloves.

Death of a Statesman: The House of Steinbrenner

Most owners of professional sports franchises are fairly anonymous figures. They sign checks, they raise ticket prices and, if they’re lucky, at some point they raise a championship trophy just long enough to hand it over to their team’s coach or star player. George Steinbrenner was an exception. Like Jerry Jones of the NFL and Mark Cuban of the NBA after him, Steinbrenner wasn’t just a Major League Baseball team owner, he was a team icon, as intrinsic to the New York Yankees’ identity as the team’s famous pinstripe uniforms. From 1973 until roughly 2005, when he faded from view, people were free to loath Steinbrenner or to romanticize him, but they couldn’t ignore him. He was the face of the franchise – and happily so. Steinbrenner didn’t just own his team, he ruled over it, which is why when a deteriorating Steinbrenner handed over primary control to his son Hal, in 2008, it felt less like a business transaction than a political regime change. Sure, the Yankees stayed in the Steinbrenner family, just like Cuba is still under the direction of a Castro. But for all that might remain the same, the ceding of power by a notoriously impulsive, ironfisted overseer would leave the empire he built forever changed. Just like there can only be one Comandante, there could only be one Boss.

In The House of Steinbrenner, Barbara Kopple captures this familial transfer of sports authority with a historian’s sense of scope and a prophet’s sense of consequence. Two months removed from Steinbrenner’s death and less than two years since the Boss officially handed over the reins to his son Hal, these events might be too timely to fully appreciate in the present, but Kopple documents them as if anticipating their future significance, aware that whatever successes or failures the Yankees have over the next 30 years will be traced back to this point. The latest in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, The House of Steinbrenner is about the end of an era. In a less than two-year span, George yielded to his children, the “original” Yankee Stadium was replaced by “new” Yankee Stadium, hot dogs were joined by sushi in the Bronx and, across the street, one generation of construction workers tore down their fathers’ installations. Sports, with their seasonal schedules, are naturally full of beginnings and endings, but this was something different, something greater. At its best, Kopple’s film captures an organization and its fans in the midst of moving forward while consumed by all that they’re leaving behind.

Kind and Generous: Unmatched

It took 21 films for the “30 for 30” series to recognize the existence of females in sports, and now it’s as if Unmatched is trying to make up for lost time. Directed by Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern Winters, and produced by Hannah Storm, this documentary isn’t just by women or about women, it seems targeted for them, too. Unmatched mentions but isn’t really invested in the fierce on-court battles between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, just like it references but never evokes their incredible athletic dominance. Unmatched isn’t really interested in tennis, you see, it’s interested in Evert and Navratilova’s rivalry. And it’s interested in their rivalry because it’s fascinated by their friendship. Eschewing traditional talking heads and similar outsider analysis, Unmatched lets Evert and Navratilova tell their own story, in their own words, all from the confines of a picturesque New York beach house that’s right out of a Nancy Meyers movie. Whereas other filmmakers would have felt compelled to turn back the clock in order to delight in the exquisite precision of Evert and Navratilova’s volleys, Unmatched settles into a comfy chair in the here-and-now so that we can watch two of the best tennis players of all time trading memories.

The film isn’t without it’s charms, but it is decidedly low on testosterone. Catch this documentary while flipping through the channels and you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’ve landed on Lifetime, not ESPN. After all, when’s the last time “The Worldwide Leader in Sports” found occasion to play any Natalie Merchant song, never mind the same song, “Kind and Generous,” three times in less than an hour? With scenes that capture Evert and Navratilova reclining on big white deck chairs, or walking down the beach wearing complementary sweater-and-scarf outfits, Unmatched looks straight out of a Nicholas Sparks movie. And if you told me that these shots were conceived for a CBS special romanticizing the friendship of Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, it would be tough to argue otherwise. (All that’s missing are dogs running up and down the surf.) The movie is so determined to convey Evert and Navratilova’s spiritual sisterhood that when the documentary ends with a shot of them driving off into the distance in a convertible, I breathed a sigh of relief that no canyon was in sight on the horizon.

Float Like a Butterfly: The American

The American stars George Clooney and gives a nod toward Clint Eastwood, but all movie long I thought of Steve McQueen. How could I not? It’s the quintessential McQueen role: terse, intense, attractive, suave. There’s even a motorcycle chase. Er, make that a Vespa chase. Close enough. Like Frank Bullitt, Doc McCoy, Tom Horn and so many other McQueen roles, Clooney’s character is a mysterious loner, and for the most part he likes it that way. Also like those McQueen roles, what little we learn about Clooney’s “Jack” (he’s called a number of different names in this film) is coaxed out of him in the tender embrace of a beautiful woman – a woman Jack is drawn to less because of who she is than because of how unusually at ease he feels in her presence, which isn’t to say he always feels at ease. That this woman is frequently topless is yet another element of The American that recalls McQueen’s filmography, because it’s hard to recall a time since the 1970s in which a major American star at the apex of his career appeared in a movie so comfortable with nudity. In the same way that small European towns are delightfully unfussy and old-fashioned, so too is The American, which in pacing and plot seems to belong to a bygone age of American cinema.

Surely it’s no coincidence then that The American is directed by a Dutchman, Anton Corbijn, who despite his background directing upbeat music videos, for U2 and Depeche Mode among others, demonstrates a meditative European cinematic sensibility. Thus it’s ironic that the tone of this film reminded me of a line from a blockbuster by the most American of filmmakers, Steven Spielberg: Corbijn’s film seems to take place in the space between spaces. (I’m still not exactly sure what that’s supposed to mean in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but in this case it feels right.) The American is like the epilogue and prologue of two Jason Bourne movies made into a film of its own. Even then, all the stuff that would usually be given center stage – the who, the how, the why – is left to rattle about in the shadows, tangibly near but never examined. Written by Rowan Joffe, based on a novel by Martin Booth, The American is the enemy of certainty. It remains ambiguous not because it wants to be profoundly inexplicable but because the film itself, if it’s about anything at all, is about the experience of not knowing. Clooney’s Jack operates in a world that requires him to trust some seemingly untrustworthy people very much and everyone else not at all. It’s a lonely existence, and a paranoid one. But it pays well, and the traveling is nice.

Mad Men & Music: Every Second Counts

Let me start by saying that I have no intention of doing a regular series of posts on Mad Men. Already there are multiple critics providing weekly recaps and analyses that are both exhaustive and eloquent, most notably Alan Sepinwall, Matt Zoller Seitz and Matt Maul. I’m happy to observe from the sidelines. But after watching Sunday’s episode, “The Suitcase,” which is easily the best installment of this fourth season and indeed one of the strongest episodes in the entire series (certainly one of the episodes with the most “wow!” moments), I feel compelled to offer a few thoughts and questions in terms of one specific scene: the last one.

Obviously if you don’t watch Mad Men or if you haven’t caught up yet, you should stop reading now. The rest of you can meet me after the jump.

Joined at the Fists: One Night in Vegas

Perhaps never before has such an eclectic group of talking heads been assembled as the one we find in One Night in Vegas, the latest entry in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series, which features interviews with the likes of Mike Tyson, Mickey Rourke, Suge Knight and Maya Angelou. Put another way, this documentary brings together a former heavyweight champion who served time in prison for rape and once bit off the ear of an opponent, an actor turned boxer turned actor with a history of substance abuse, a record producer who is widely rumored to be linked to the murder of Notorious B.I.G. (and myriad other crimes) and, last but not least, a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer who recited a poem at the inauguration of President Clinton. Wrap your head around that for a second. These seemingly unconnected individuals are brought together here because of the events of September 7, 1996, the titular subject of the film, when two things occurred that, likewise, might not seem to be related at first glance: Mike Tyson defeated Bruce Seldon to win the WBA title and then, after getting into a brawl of is own, rapper Tupac Shakur was assassinated on his way to a post-fight party. One Night in Vegas suggests that the proximity of these events might not be entirely coincidental. Of course if you’ve watched previous “30 for 30” pictures The U and Straight Outta L.A. and witnessed the strong cultural bond between sports and rap, you suspected that already.

One Night in Vegas touches on themes similar to those two films, but it never comes off as repetitive or otherwise tired in large part because it exhibits a style as diverse as those talking heads. Directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood, the documentary opens with spoken word artists Joshua Brandon Bennett and Rahleek “B. Yung” Johnson standing in a boxing ring as they set the stage like a Greek chorus: “In mere seconds, drinks transformed into drive-bys, shots of Patron became shots in passenger’s side windows, and what should have been a lifelong bond was guillotined by gunfire. … On September 7, 1996, there was more bloodshed outside of the ring than inside of it.” From there, the film employs its other unusual flourish: illustrations by Steve (Flameboy) Beaumont that depict Tyson and Shakur as comic book heroes, one of them triumphing and the other being gunned down. It’s a seemingly random artistic choice, but it’s also a refreshing break from the documentary norm, and a needed one, considering that the rest of the film is mostly a parade of talking heads yapping away in front of bland interview backdrops. Some of these interviewees give eyewitness accounts of that fateful night in September, some give us a historian’s overview (thank you, Chris Connelly) and some outline the similarities of Tyson and Shakur – two men who were celebrated and yet feared and whose primal, menacing antics belied their intelligence. But the film’s most entertaining interviews are the ones that, journalistically speaking, probably don’t need to be there, like Angelou’s typically eloquent account of preventing Shakur from getting into fight on the set of Poetic Justice (and then lecturing him about African-American history to boot), and Rourke’s equally unsurprising barely-coherent account of an incident in which he and Tyson almost joined forces in beating the crap out of someone at a club.

Fighting for Truth: The Tillman Story

Pat Tillman had the stare of a prizefighter, the inquisitiveness of an investigative journalist, the fearlessness of a stuntman, the protectiveness of a big brother, the self-awareness of a philosophy major, the devotion of a best friend and the mouth of a New Jersey auto mechanic. Or so I have been told. Having worked two years at Arizona State University and two years more in the NFL, I’ve come in contact with several people who were friends or at least friendly with Tillman, but I never met the man. I know Tillman only through the stories of those former friends and teammates, and through the tremendous features of Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith and the controversial book by Jon Krakauer. Now comes Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary, which through the accounts of those who knew Tillman best in life or were nearest to him at his death corroborates every description of Tillman that I’ve ever heard, revealing an individualistic, intelligent man of character who was also something of a rascal (that was his charm). But The Tillman Story is less about who Pat Tillman was than about who Pat Tillman wasn’t. If you’ve heard that Pat Tillman was a hero and a patriot, well, that’s true, by the most honorable definitions of those words. But Tillman wasn’t the quite hero that the military and the upper reaches of the Bush administration needed him to be. And so Tillman became in death the one thing that by all accounts he never was in life: someone else’s man.

This wasn’t Tillman’s doing. It was a crime done to him. Bar-Lev’s documentary attempts to set the record straight, to make Tillman’s story his own again. It’s a hard thing to do – to liberate a man from myth without spinning a brand new one – and it’s a task made harder still when those who knew the subject best are the ones most reluctant to describe him. In this film, Tillman’s wife, mother, father and youngest brother speak of Pat with a frankness and ease that suggests they trust their interviewer, but they are noticeably careful to avoid describing Pat with broad generalities, in part out of respect for a man who seemed to defy and detest oversimplified labels, and also because they’ve seen firsthand how such abstractions are building blocks for illusions. When Tillman walked away from a multi-million dollar NFL salary to enlist in the military and offered no explicit explanation as to why, the media filled in the gaps, writing the narrative they wanted to tell instead of the narrative they could validate. For them, Tillman was too good a story to pass up. Meantime, politicians latched on to Tillman’s enlistment as a sign of good old-fashioned American values and as a testament to the virtuousness of the military’s upcoming engagements. For them, Tillman was too famous to serve anonymously, even though his actions – Tillman refused all interviews and didn’t release a statement – made it clear that was his desire. Tillman was the best recruiting tool since Uncle Sam. His image was no longer his own to control. And the worst was yet to come.