Just a slight hook, but otherwise….
Bill Paxton’s second attempt at a feature film turned out to be a good one. A young golfer named Francis Quimet (Shia LaBeouf) comes from a poor family that is struggling to make it. Francis does what he can to help the family out by earning money as a caddy for the country club across the street. When a country club member encourages him to enter an amateur tournament, he jumps at the chance. Against the wishes of the country club, and his father, Francis fights his way through the tournament, but ends up failing to qualify. Discouraged, and not supported by his father, Francis decides to go into retail and accept his fate as a ‘commoner’ in life. When a second opportunity arises, the U.S. Open, he decides to take another chance. Unlike the first go around, Francis finds himself doing well, so much so that he ends up going head-to-head with the great Harry Vardon, a very successful British golfer.
This is the first role, outside of Holes, where LaBeouf really shows his range as an actor. Certainly finding his way out of kiddy films, LaBeouf brings a character that is torn with what he needs to do versus what he wants to do. This is probably the first movie where you’ll see LaBeouf not do something goofy or off-beat; he displays that he can be more than Lewis from Even Stevens. His character, Francis Ouimet, could be considered a reflection of himself. He set himself up as an off-beat, physical comedy type of actor with a large amount of years in the Even Stevens franchise. He almost shook that persona off when it came to Holes. Of course, Constantine made him revert back to that stereotypical character that we’re all use to. With The Greatest Game Ever Played it was different. Here he started with a drama and ended with a drama. There weren’t any wacky moments, no chances for him to play the goofball, he was simply Francis Quimet, a struggling young adult wanting to pursue his dreams. This role set LaBeouf up for what he is now, a serious actor. Credit Bill Paxton and Mark Frost (the Twin Peaks guy) for creating this story and set-up for him. LaBeouf pulled this story off brilliantly. Need an example? There’s a scene in the film where the club president tries to replace LaBeouf’s caddy with someone more intelligent (as they put it) and LaBeouf doesn’t have any of it. LaBeouf walks up to the president and says, “Don’t you ever talk to my caddy again.” That one moment defines what he did in this film. He brought the drama and did it in a very strong way.
Speaking of drama, let’s talk about the story. The story itself is pretty solid. Sure you can pretty much guess from the outset what’s going to go down, but finding the ‘villain’ in the film is going to be unusual. Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane) is a very likable character. Even in the end, when what you think might happen happens, you’re still not mad at Vardon. He carries himself through the story like an anti-hero, which is probably what he was written as. Frost puts together a very unique set of characters that don’t play their usual cogs that they’re suppose to play. For example, you’ll probably dislike loud mouth John McDermont (Michael Weaver), who is the ‘proud American’ playing to beat the British, more than the British. The story doesn’t try to fit its characters into the typical Hollywood mold, which is very commendable. Now the story does have a flaw or two in it. The relationship part of the story with Francis and his father Arthur is pretty empty. You see that Arthur pretty much repeats his unsupportive nature at least three times during the movie to Francis. At the end, it all gets solved, but there’s so much shallow to it that you don’t feel a damn thing for that repaired relationship. The second part of the story which seems incredibly empty is the budding relationship between Francis and a rich girl named Sarah Wallis (Peyton List). It’s on and off again, but it never goes anywhere. There’s no kiss, there’s no passion, it’s only a ‘I like you, do you like me?’ sort of relationship. If Frost and Paxton had nixed both of these storylines instead of forcing them, the film would have benefited greatly. As it is, they’re both a waste of time.
Nice shot!
Being a period piece really helps when it comes to visuals. While I’m no historian, the film seems incredibly accurate to the time period it’s portraying (early 20th century). With that said, the film is gorgeous to watch. The greens are lush, the way it’s filmed is incredibly appeasing to the eye and it all looks beautiful on Blu-ray. For example, in Round 3 of the tournament there is a rain storm, they play through it, and there is so much detail seen. The rain drops, the drops of water on the player’s faces, everything about the scene says it looks better in HD than it does on DVD. I love detail with no graininess and that’s exactly what you get with the film. As for the audio, it’s very triumphant, as Brian Tyler’s score just moves the story along in very dramatic fashion. It sounds beautiful coming through a 7.1 set-up.
As for features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– A View from the Gallery: On the Set of The Greatest Game Ever Played
– Two Legends and the Greatest Game
– From Caddie to Champion: Francis Ouimet
– Commentary by Bill Paxton
– Commentary by Mark Frost
While certainly not great in numbers, the features you do get are good. Outside of the commentary (I just can’t stand listening to Paxton for more than 10 minutes at a time), I think the first three features make this set good. I would also like to point out how incredibly impressed I am with the menu system that was developed for this Blu-ray. This is one of the more fancier, well-designed menus that I’ve seen in a very long time. I’m happy that someone is giving a damn about their work.