"Leatherheads" is billed as a romantic comedy or as an "old-time football" movie. It some ways it is both, but in some ways it is neither. Sure, it has the romantic triangle angle and it also has pre-NFL, no holds barred football. However, it has a subplot that sometimes becomes the main plot about Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (Jim Krasinski), a war hero football star who finds his sudden fame is causing people to look a little deeper into his "war hero" past. Renee Zellweger plays the reporter following him and digging into his past, while fighting off the advances of Jimmy "Dodge" Connelly (George Clooney). Connelly is a football star in decline, trying to keep pro football afloat, who recruits Rutherford to the pro league. This sudden attention is a boom for the league, but threatens to expose Rutherford. Connelly goes back and forth from ally to adversary as he becomes jealous of all the fame that used to belong to him. Clooney directs and does a nice job duplicating the feel of old time movies in the way the characters talk and move. In fact, for the first half, it was almost disorienting and seemed too gimmicky, but once it settled in, it fit the atmosphere Clooney was going far. As you may have guessed, I found the war hero plot to be more interesting than anything else in the movie. That really didn't start to get going until the second half.Grade: C
Trailer:
No comments:
Post a Comment