Review: For Love of the Game

Baseball and Kevin Costner have always made for a perfect pairing -- Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and now For Love of the Game.

Costner plays Billy Chapel, a pitcher to the baseball manor born who now finds himself at a crossroads, both personally and professionally. His team, the Detroit Tigers, has been sold to new management by its longtime owner Mr. Wheeler (Brian Cox) and Billy will be traded. His romance with Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) is in even more dire straits: enamored but estranged, she's off to London for a better job. As Billy takes the mound in Yankee Stadium, he reflects upon the events leading up to this moment. In particular, he reviews his relationship with Jane.

When they first meet, five years earlier, she has a broken tire and he's the white knight come to save the day. He invites her to a ballgame that he's pitching in, then dinner, then a tryst in his hotel suite. When he leaves the next morning, he makes a date to meet in one month, which is the next time he'll be back in New York. A month later, they do meet but she shares her trepidation about becoming a groupie -- she's not that kind of girl. He's never treated her like that kind of girl, he responds, and they set the rules for their relationship. However, as their feelings deepen and obstacles arise, both must confront themselves and each other. Will their relationship last his love of the game? "You don't need me," Jane tells him before she departs for London. "You and the ball and the diamond are perfect."

The film is not as linear as the preceding summary. There are extended flashbacks as Billy rewinds his memories. The game he is playing in Yankee Stadium becomes weighted with more and more significance. At the age of 40, in a career that has spanned 4,100 innings in the course of 19 years, he is in the midst of pitching a perfect game. The physical and emotional tolls gradually erode him and as the game enters its later innings, one wonders if the game will end in triumph or defeat.

With Sam Raimi at the helm, one is there rooting all the way. Raimi proves that his immaculate direction of A Simple Plan was no aberration. Scenes here are executed simply and without preamble, but there are cinematic flourishes especially in his use of sound. Baseballs have never sounded crisper as they whip through the air and smack into the catcher's mitt. Raimi also utilizes silence effectively to convey the intense, almost herculean concentration any pitcher needs to block out the deafening noise and just pitch.

Though Billy and Jane's romance is believable, it's more due to Dana Stevens' skillful adaptation of Michael Shaara's posthumously published novel than from Preston's participation. Preston has always been dime-store to me -- a blond like ten others with no discernible quality that is hers and hers alone. Though she has been quite adequate in films like Jerry Maguire and Citizen Ruth, she is a bit too plasticine to be particularly captivating. As Jane, she is good but the portrayal isn't starmaking. She doesn't challenge Costner the way Renee Zellweger did Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. In fact, young Jena Malone as her onscreen daughter Heather not only does wonders with her brief role, but she contributes a richness in her scenes with Costner that Preston is unable to.

Though their romance dominates, let us not forget that the title of the film is For Love of the Game. Indeed, it is the camaraderie amongst the players that provides the film with its heart and soul. They are little touches, these depictions, but they strike clear chords. A former teammate to whom Billy is now pitching may be on a rival team, but both clearly esteem the other highly and regard each other as worthy adversaries. Another teammate who errs badly, ridiculously and publicly on the field is gifted with words of comfort and wisdom from Billy: "Don't help them to make a fool of you." And, of course, there is the symbiosis between Billy and his catcher Gus (the wonderful John C. Reilly). A den mother figure ("I have the ugliest wife in the league," Billy cracks), Gus is his greatest cheerleader when fatigue begins to make Billy falter. "Just throw," Gus says. "The boys are all behind you."

Costner pitches a flawless performance, certainly the best of his career thus far. His presence as a romantic leading man has never been in any danger and he continues to be as swoonable as he was a decade ago in Bull Durham. I, for one, have been fairly immune to his charms but my knees buckled -- my knees buckled -- when he asked Preston's Jane, "How do you like to be kissed?"

There's a remarkable scene that finds Chapel all alone in his hotel room. Raimi frames Costner in a master shot, his figure dwarfed by the largeness of the suite. Again, the only sound is silence and suddenly Costner's body is seized with sobs. The moment is all the more moving when you're aware of the scene that precedes it but, in and of itself, it is one of the most moving and powerful scenes of loneliness and vulnerability. How I wish the film had ended there -- how daring and subversive it would have been.

For Love of the Game

Directed by: Sam Raimi

Written by: Dana Stevens; adapted from Michael Shaara's novel

Starring: Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston, John C. Reilly, Jena Malone, Brian Cox, J.K. Simmons