Paul J. Nemecek For Love of the Game is a film about Billy Chapel, an aging pitcher who may be pitching the last game, and perhaps the best game, of his career. This is happening on a day when he has discovered that the owner of his team is selling the team and the new owners want to trade him away. He has also discovered that his girlfriend of several years is leaving him to take a job in London. In short, at the beginning of the film, Billy Chapel is having a really bad day. Throughout the nine innings of the game that form the narrative core of the film, we experience various flashbacks that take us into the personal life of Billy Chapel.One of the things that must be said at the beginning is that For Love of the Game is derivative, formulaic, and filled with cliches. This need not be a fatal flaw. The same could be said of some of Shakespeare's best work (e.g., Romeo and Juliet). In fact, For Love of the Game provides Kevin Costner with his best starring role since Dances With Wolves. There must be something about baseballs. Two of Costner's better films from the past are Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. The basic role is similar to Costner's role in Bull Durham, the aging but wise team veteran. In its symbolic view of transcendent moments and meaningful relationships, For Love of the Game has more in common with Field of Dreams.The film is based on a novel by Michael Shaara. Shaara previously wrote the book that was the basis for the film Gettysburg ("Killer Angels"). The screenplay adaptation is by Dana Stevens whose previous writing credits include City of Angels. While it may seem like a weird combination for a baseball film, with Director Sam Raimi at the helm this film really works. One of the reasons it works is that, like Field of Dreams, this is not really a baseball film.This is a film about the human spirit and our longing for transcendence. Years ago, I played on a softball team in league competition. It's the bottom of the ninth, men on second and third, two outs, and I'm at the plate with a 3-0 count. I'm ready to take the walk. I was a pitcher, I knew the strike zone, and that year I was leading the league in walks taken. My older, and occasionally wiser, brother was our coach, and he pulled me aside and told me to go for it. I was batting .750 that year, and the guy behind me in the line-up was struggling. Frankly, I would have preferred the safe way out. Let the other guy take the heat for losing the game. Inspired by my brother's confidence in me, I swung at the next pitch, and hit a double to win the game. That was more than twenty years ago, but I remember that moment to this day, because it was someone else's confidence in me that gave me the courage to reach for the stars.In the final analysis, that's what this film is about. Baseball becomes the context, but the theme is the yearning of the human spirit for transcendence and meaning. What makes this film worth seeing is its emphasis on camaraderie and espirit-de-corps. In many films like this (e.g., The Natural) the hero finds his strength within and triumphs against the odds by superhuman effort. Billy Chapel's saving grace is his brokenness. It is his willingness to acknowledge his need for others that allows him to triumph in the end. While there are clearly elements borrowed from other films here, the final product is fresh, inspirational, and fun.

The_Film_Cricket 'For Love of the Game' combines two stories: One I had a genuine interest in and the other a tired wheezy old genre piece that I've seen a million times. Sad thing is, it's the latter that eventually takes over completely.The movie stars Kevin Costner (who until now had never been in a bad sports movie) as Billy Chapel, a 40 year-old pitcher who's game has seen better days. He's close to retirement and as the movie opens he has set an elegant dinner for his girlfriend who never shows. Even worse (and these things just conveniently happen on the same day) he has been traded and the team has been sold.I might have been genuinely interested in the story of an over-the-hill pitcher and his struggle to hold onto the talent that he once had and that alone is what drew me to the movie. But director Sam Raimi hammers together a tired old love story complete with all the nuts and bolts that no bad love story is ever without.There is the obligatory scene in which the two meet-cute in an unusual place (by the roadside when her car breaks down). She doesn't know who he is and knows virtually nothing about baseball (would it be too much to ask the screenwriters if the hero could fall for a sports nut?). The fall madly in love before she loses confidence in him and a huge misunderstanding leads to one of those big emotional scenes in which it looks like she will leave him forever to take a job overseas. Does she? I guarantee that you have seen this movie before and know the outcome.The movie is a surprise to me. Costner has starred in plenty of bad movies but until this movie he has never starred in a bad sports movie especially baseball after gems like 'Bull Durham' and 'Field of Dreams'. He's made his mark as box office poison in the sci-fi genre but I hope this doesn't mean that that reputation is moving over to the sports movie arena.I'm also surprised that this movie comes from Sam Raimi. In 1998 he made the hard-edged 'A Simple Plan', the story of three men who find $4,000,000 in a plane crash and struggle to keep it a secret which leads to distrust and tragedy. That movie was about human nature and never for once did we anticipate where it was going.There are two scenes in 'For Love of the Game' in which Costner is on the mound and is able to block out everything around him by 'Focusing on the mechanism'. Perhaps that logic should have been applied to the screenplay.

ThreeThumbsUp This movie didn't take long to get sappy and cheesy. It begins with a montage of Billy Chappel's (Kevin Cosner) life leading up to his final pitching performance in New York against the Yankees. Before the game, he finds out that the Tigers' beloved owner is selling the team and his girlfriend is moving to London. "There's a job there Billy. A good job. An editor's position." It gets worse. Before taking the field, he takes a whiff of his old glove and there it is, his first flashback to his childhood; playing ball in the back yard. As he's warming up in the bullpen before the game, his manager wants to start a young catcher, but Billy insists that his buddy Gus start instead. "If Gus doesn't play, I don't pitch." OK then. As the game rolls along, he flashes back to his romance with Kelly Preston and everything is just dandy. He's got a perfect game until, wait, what? The young prospect he met before the game that used to be his bat-boy comes to the plate... Only redeeming factor is the actual baseball action. Looks real enough and it was filmed in Yankee Stadium.

richard-1787 This movie is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long, and that's not the worst of its problems.Perhaps the worst of its problems is that it tries to be two very different movies.On the one hand, it tells the story of a great major league pitcher, as he recalls the last several years of his life while pitching what starts out as an unimportant game and ends up becoming the most important game of his career. It is the story of a man who triumphs over adversity - pain in his shoulder, etc. - to pitch a last, great game.On the other hand, it's the story of a man who, off the field, becomes involved with a woman who only causes him trouble. She wants him to NEED her, and by the last scene, though he has pitched a perfect game, which is enough to put most men on cloud 9 for the rest of their lives, he tells her that he NEEDS her, they kiss in what is supposed to be a very romantic public kiss, and one imagines that the producers thought that would win over large audiences of middle-aged women.I can't watch this movie as a stereotypical woman - that's not how nature made me. I can only say that, for me, the romance was constantly aggravating, because the protagonist allowed himself to become and remain involved with a woman who constantly wanted him to choose between her and his real passion, baseball.But do many women really expect men to subordinate their non-romantic passions for them and tell them that they NEED them? Not that they love them, which is completely understandable, but that they NEED them? I don't know.So this is what the movie is about, and it keeps going on, and on, and on, with more incidents. The story simply does not merit going on over 2 hours about this.If you're looking for a baseball movie, this is likely to disappoint you. If you're looking for the story of a man who comes to the realization that NEEDING a woman is more important than accomplishing something important in his life, maybe this is for you. If you even exist.