Shia Labeouf is perfectly cast as superbrat tennis ace John McEnroe, but this replay of his 1980 Wimbledon final with Björn Borg fails to create drama
This tennis film feels like a two-hour baseline rally, and it’s not just the rackets that are made of wood. It is all about the allegedly fascinating psychological face-off between supercool Swede Björn Borg and the superbrat challenger from New York, John McEnroe – played respectively by Sverrir Gudnason and Shia Labeouf. It culminates in their first, titanic Wimbledon confrontation in the 1980 final. That really was an unbearably tense contest, but at the end of this film my nails remained salon-fresh. The awful truth was that for all their rivalry and wildly different styles, there wasn’t any needle between these two men personally, no tension, nothing outside the tennis court for us to get excited about.
Really, almost any other pairing of characters from...
This tennis film feels like a two-hour baseline rally, and it’s not just the rackets that are made of wood. It is all about the allegedly fascinating psychological face-off between supercool Swede Björn Borg and the superbrat challenger from New York, John McEnroe – played respectively by Sverrir Gudnason and Shia Labeouf. It culminates in their first, titanic Wimbledon confrontation in the 1980 final. That really was an unbearably tense contest, but at the end of this film my nails remained salon-fresh. The awful truth was that for all their rivalry and wildly different styles, there wasn’t any needle between these two men personally, no tension, nothing outside the tennis court for us to get excited about.
Really, almost any other pairing of characters from...
- 9/7/2017
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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