For Love of the Game
USA 1999
Reviewed by Andy Richards
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Detroit, the present. Billy Chapel is the star pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. The night before he's due to pitch the last game of the season (against the Yankees), Mr Wheeler, the owner of the Tigers, tells Billy that he's selling the team. Wheeler has an option of trading Billy to the Giants, but suggests that he might want to retire. Billy's girlfriend Jane tells him that she is leaving him for a job in London.
Next day, waiting his turn to pitch, Billy reminisces about his five-year relationship with Jane. They first met when he helped her with her broken-down car, and began dating soon after. She overcame her fears that she was perceived as a team groupie. When she came to visit him in Florida, Jane found him sleeping with his masseuse. Later, she asked him to help recover her runaway teenage daughter Heather. They spent more time together. Billy injured his hand, and took his anger out on Jane. Jane began dating her editor.
When pitching on the mound, Billy is ruthlessly focused. Jane, meanwhile, is bombarded with match coverage while waiting for her flight. Billy goes on to pitch a perfect game, before telling Wheeler that he is retiring. Billy goes to the airport, intending to fly to England, but Jane is still there waiting for him.
Review
Baseball films have always been a favourite locus for explorations of American masculinity and they usually treat the game with quasi-mystical awe. The magic diamond is repeatedly envisioned in such films as The Natural and Field of Dreams (Kevin Costner's breakthrough film) as a place where fallen men can be redeemed, where fathers and sons can bond in a shared tradition and where the American Dream can find its purest expression. For Love of the Game, however, leaves you feeling that the genre has perhaps already touched all its bases. So much so that, in the film's final act, you realise that 40-year-old Billy Chapel's mission to pitch the legendary "perfect game" - an entire line of zeroes on the board - to pitch, in the words of the commentator, "against time, against age, against ending," can only end by embracing well-worn clichés.
For the Love of the Game's complacency is revealed most clearly through its central romance, where the decks are stacked entirely in Chapel's favour. As Billy waits for his turn at the mound, he reflects on his relationship with Jane through a series of crudely cued flashbacks (he fingers a scar on his hand, or smells the leather of his glove). But any feelings he may have about his habitually selfish treatment of Jane are rigorously excluded on the pitch. Billy might be pitching his last game for the Tigers in the full knowledge that the club's owner wants to trade him to the Giants; but even here there's nothing at stake in the idea he should compromise his baseball career to concentrate on his relationship with Jane. Now in his forties, his decision to give up the game stems as much from a desire to retire gracefully and enshrine himself as one of the golden greats, as from a willingness to devote himself more fully to Jane.
Jane meanwhile is constantly asked by Billy to accept him as a baseball player before anything else; her own career ambitions are given short shrift (particularly in a scene which contrasts the pretensions of the New York arts scene with Billy's easy-going naturalism). Their relationship is characterised by condescension on his part, and a nauseating deference on hers (she is shocked when he actually suggests spending time together with her and her teenage daughter).
Unsurprisingly, director Sam Raimi struggles to make much of such shallow material. Having made successful departures from the horror genre in which he made his name with the more mainstream films The Quick and the Dead and A Simple Plan, his involvement in this grating star vehicle is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of For the Love of the Game: the Evil Dead are, presumably, turning in their grave.
Credits
- Director
- Sam Raimi
- Producers
- Armyan Bernstein
- Amy Robinson
- Screenplay
- Dana Stevens
- Based on the novel by
- Michael Shaara
- Director of Photography
- John Bailey
- Editors
- Eric L. Beason
- Arthur Coburn
- Production Designer
- Neil Spisak
- Music
- Basil Poledouris
- ©Universal Studios
- Production Companies
- Universal Pictures presents a Beacon Pictures/TIG Productions/Mirage
- Enterprises production
- Executive Producers
- Ron Bozman
- Marc Abraham
- Production Supervisor
- Kris Nielsen
- Production Co-ordinators
- Liz Newman
- Dina Brendlinger-Farnell
- Unit Production Manager
- Harvey Waldman
- Location Managers
- Maria Bierniak
- Josh L. Silverman
- Aspen:
- John P. Fedynich
- Jillian Livingston
- Post-production Supervisor
- Debbi Bossi
- 2nd Unit Director
- David Stephan
- Assistant Directors
- Eric Heffron
- Richard Oswald
- T. Sean Ferguson
- Basti Van Der Woude
- David Riebel
- Bac Delorme
- Stacy Beneville
- Eric Yellin
- 2nd Unit:
- Alexandra Perce
- NY:
- T. Sean Ferguson
- Script Supervisor
- Lynne Twentyman
- Casting
- Lynn Kressel
- Associate:
- Susan Farris
- ADR Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- 2nd Unit Directors of Photography
- Frederic Goodich
- Phil Abraham
- Aerial Director of Photography
- David B. Nowell
- Camera Operators
- Monty Rowan
- Craig DiBona
- Wescam Operator
- David Norris
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- Peter Donen
- Visual Effects Co-supervisor
- Miller Drake
- Visual Effects
- Cinesite
- Hammerhead Productions
- Special Visual Effects
- CFC/MVFX
- Additional Digital Effects
- POP Film
- Pacific Title
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinators:
- Mark Bero
- Al Di Sarro
- Foreman:
- Fred Kramer Jr
- Graphic Artist
- Addison Foster Pettit
- Art Directors
- Jim Feng
- Steve Arnold
- Set Designers
- Andrew Menzies
- Sally Thornton
- Set Decorators
- Carolyn Cartwright
- Karen O'Hara
- Costume Designer
- Judianna Makovsky
- Costume Supervisor
- Margo Baxley
- Additional Wardrobe
- Denise Andres
- Pattie Barbosa
- Mildred Del Rio
- Anne Gorman
- Estella Marie
- Cheryl Kilbourne-Kimpton
- Roseann Milano
- Marsha Patten
- Tom Soluri
- Missy West
- Susan J. Wright
- Make-up Department Heads
- Bernadette Mazur
- Kris Evans
- Key Hair Stylist
- Jasen Joseph Sica
- Main Title Sequence
- Pablo Ferro
- Title House
- Editor:
- James Gavin Bedford
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title
- Orchestrations
- Steven Scott Smalley
- Basil Poledouris
- Music Supervisor
- G. Marq Roswell
- Music Co-ordination
- Yvonne McDonald
- Thomas Golubic
- Music Editors
- Dick Bernstein
- Curtis Roush
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Tim Boyle
- Music Consultant
- Danny Holloway
- Sound Mixers
- Ed Novick
- Steve Maslow
- Gregg Landaker
- Additional Audios
- Mark Ormandy
- Glenn T. Morgan
- Burtis Bills
- Recordists
- Brion Paccassi
- Frank Fleming
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Kelly Cabral
- Wylie Stateman
- Dialogue Editors
- Lauren Stephens
- Richard Dwan
- Elizabeth Kenton
- Christopher Hogan
- Dan Hegeman
- Sound Effects Design
- Jon Title
- Sound Effects Editors
- Perry Robertson
- Randy Kelley
- Scott Sanders
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Jennifer Mann
- Recordist:
- Diana Flores
- Mixer:
- Alan Holly
- Editor:
- Constance A. Kazmer
- Foley Editors
- Craig Jaeger
- Hector Gika
- Aerial Co-ordinator
- David Paris
- Baseball Co-ordinator
- Augie Garrido
- Baseball Technical Consultants
- Leigh Steinberg
- Jeff Moorad
- Broadcast Technical Adviser
- Brent A. Shyer
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Christopher Doyle
- Animal Trainer
- Cheryl Harris
- Helicopter Pilots
- Al Cerullo
- Jim Dirker
- Cast
- Kevin Costner
- Billy Chapel
- Kelly Preston
- Jane Aubrey
- John C. Reilly
- Gus Sinski
- Jena Malone
- Heather
- Brian Cox
- Gary Wheeler
- J.K. Simmons
- Frank Perry
- Vin Scully
- Steve Lyons
- themselves
- Carmine D. Giovinazzo
- Ken Strout
- Bill Rogers
- Davis Birch
- Hugh Ross
- Mike Udall
- Domenick Lombardozzi
- tow truck dealer
- Arnetia Walker
- airport bartender
- Larry Joshua
- Yankee fan in bar
- Detroit Tigers
- Greer Barnes
- Mickey Hart
- Scott Bream
- Brian Whitt
- Jose Mota
- Jose Garcia
- Earl Johnson
- Marcus Ransom
- Chris Lemonis
- Leo Giordano
- Jesse Ibarra
- Dennis Skinner
- Pedro Swann
- Juan Vasquez
- Michael Rivera
- Jimmy Pena
- David Eiland
- relief pitcher
- Joe Lisi
- Pete
- Jim Colborn
- 3rd base coach
- Michael Borzello
- catcher double
- Paul Bradshaw
- Tiger pitching coach
- Gene Kirley
- Tiger bench coach
- Chris Fischer
- Jonathan Marc McDonnell
- Barry Bradford
- Kevin Craig West
- Wes Said Drake
- Luis Moro
- Tiger bench
- New York Yankees
- Michael Papajohn
- Sam Tuttle
- John Darjean Jr
- Jonathan Warble
- Donzell McDonald
- Lenny Howell
- Scott Pose
- Matt Crane
- Vick Brown
- Jesus Cabrillo
- Chris Ashby
- Nardini
- Bill Masse
- Mike Robinson
- Mike Buddie
- Jack Spellman
- Eric Knowles
- Ted Franklin
- Ricky Ledee
- Ruiz
- Juan Nieves
- Francisco Delgado
- Augie Garrido
- Yankee manager
- Rick Reed
- home plate umpire
- Rich Garcia
- 1st base umpire
- Jerry Crawford
- 2nd base umpire
- Robert Leo Shepard
- Yankee Stadium announcer
- Eddie Layton
- Yankee Stadium organist
- Robinson Frank Adu
- locker room attendant
- T. Sean Ferguson
- Victor Colicchio
- David Mucci
- hecklers
- Jacob Reynolds
- Wheeler's nephew
- Maurice Shrog
- Yankee Stadium usher
- Karen Williams
- Kisha Birch
- Tracy Middendorf
- blonde player's wife
- William Newman
- Fitch
- P.J. Barry
- Waldorf doorman
- Frank Girardeau
- Waldorf bellhop
- Caterina Zapponi
- Waldorf singer
- Monty Alexander
- Waldorf pianist
- Daniel Dae Kim
- ER doctor
- Judith Drake
- ER nurse
- Bill Vincent
- X-ray technician
- Billy V. Costner
- Billy's father
- Sharon Rae Costner
- Billy's mother
- Mark Thomason
- Billy's father, early years
- Laura Cayouette
- masseuse
- Christopher Cousins
- Ian
- Ted Raimi
- Michael Emerson
- gallery doormen
- Shelly Desai
- taxi driver
- Lucinda Faraldo
- airline ticket agent
- Ed Morgan
- man at café
- Brian Donald Hickey
- Tracy Perry
- autograph seekers
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- United International Pictures (UK) Ltd
- 12,423 feet
- 138 minutes 3 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
- Colour by
- DeLuxe
- Super 35 [2.35:1]