For Love of the Game

Rating:
Summary: Near-Perfect Pitch
Review: Kevin Costner (Bull Durham, Field of Dreams) and baseball movies go together like hot dogs and... well, baseball. They work a magic to become something greater than their individual parts. While some people feel Costner films should be avoided like whatever they make hot dogs out of (am I stretching this metaphor too thin?), there is no doubt that baseball makes them both more acceptable to the palette.

In For Love of the Game, Costner plays Billy Chapel, a forty year old major league pitcher in the twilight of his career. During the course of the final game of the season, he reflects on his life and his career.

Listening to Billy talk to himself as he stands on the pitcher's mound, the audience hears his desperation and his confidence. From the inner peace he finds to block out the distractions of Yankee Stadium to his decision to brush a batter away from the plate.

But this isn't just about one game, it's about Billy's career and his on-again/off-again relationship with Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston, Holy Man). It's about beginnings and endings, coming together and coming apart. It's about the best game of a career at the worst time of a life.

Billy has his moments, but he also makes mistakes. Through it all, Costner makes us believe it. Costner shows us Billy's desperate need to find someone to share his victories with, but we also see a darker side. He is capable of great passion, but also great spite. We don't always love him, or understand his actions, but he is utterly human.

With stunning camera work and vision, director Sam Raimi turns Costner's duel into a thing of beauty. Every pitch becomes a breathtaking moment. The segues to Billy's past are seamless and never confusing.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about For the Love of the Game is its devotion to baseball. Even in Billy's personal life, baseball is ever present. This is a baseball movie dealing with the soul of the game.

It's a film that speaks to the heart and makes us cry. Not because it's hopelessly romantic, but because it reminds us of our own endings. No matter what they may be. At the twilight of summer, as the regular season draws to a close, this movie reminds us why we love baseball.

Rating:
Summary: "Clear the mechanism."
Review: My son, a former college pitcher, absolutely adored this film--not because of the overall story, but because of the head games pitchers play on the mound. And to its credit, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME vividly depicts a day out on the hill for a major league pitcher at the twilight of his career, Detroit Tiger ace Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner). My son instantly identified with Chapel's talking to himself between pitches, trying to get inside the head of the batter (What's he expecting? Fastball or breaking ball?), hoping that his next pitch will throw the batter off balance. And finally, Chapel's ability to completely shut out all noise and distractions ("Clear the mechanism," he says to himself.) was very effective.

And those are the highlights of the movie. Unfortunately, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME is a compilation of flashbacks centering around a contrived love story that has been rehashed and recycled thousands of times. Director Sam Raimi gives us a story about the on-again/off-again relationship between Chapel and Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston), a magazine exec. Chapel is unwilling to make a commitment, while Jane's pessimistic insecurity about the relationship becomes downright annoying. Costner is so wooden in these scenes he appears to be going through the motions, while Preston whines and pines like a high school sophomore. The final scene between the two of them, in the airport, is uncomfortable to watch.

John C. Reilly turns in an admirable performance as grisly veteran catcher Gus Sinski, and the soothing voice of Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully lends wonderful credibility to the drama as Chapel makes a bid to pitch a perfect game. I only wish FOR LOVE OF THE GAME had confined itself to the action on the mound; there wasn't much action going on anywhere else.
--D. Mikels

Rating:
Summary: Not a baseball fan
Review: I am not a baseball fan but i can tell you this movie is really good it is really deep full of emotion. I don't know anything about the game basball i live in England but yet i was able to really enjoy it bcoz it doesn't really focus on the game but on the personal life of a successful baseball player. Brilliant buy it.

Rating:
Summary: For the love of the game
Review: Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is an aging major league pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. Billy does everything he can to be the best at the only thing he really cares about....baseball. However, Billy lucks up and finds a great woman named Jane (Kelly Preston). Will Billy find someone that he really really cares a lot about with Jane, or will America's favorite pastime, baseball, still be the only thing that Billy Chapel will fight for? I recommend watching the movie to find out.

"Field of Dreams" is one of my favorite movies of all time. I know that just about everybody's question will be "Is For Love of the Game as great as Field of Dreams?" after they see that this is a baseball movie and that Kevin Costner is the movie's main star. In my opinion, they're both great movies and they're two of the best sports movies ever made, but I didn't think that "For Love of the Game" is quite as good as "Field of Dreams" is. This movie has its spectacular times such as when Billy is giving it all he's got to try and get a perfect game. The love interest between Billy and Jane is also interesting and well done. I think the only reason that I didn't think it was as good as "Field of Dreams" is because "Field of Dreams" was VERY original and it was unbelievably captivating. Whereas, "For Love of the Game" is a great movie, but it's not as original and not as captivating as "Field of Dreams."

If you like great sports or baseball movies, and especially if you liked "Field of Dreams," I recommend getting "For Love of the Game."

Rating:
Summary: Now THIS movie shows excellent balance!
Review: It used to be that in order to get "inside a character's head" you had to read a book, where the author had many pages to use for character and plot development. Most very good- excellent movies have only 90-120 minutes to do the same, and many fall flat on their faces. They either focus too much on the game action or on insight into the characters. Either one can lead to total boredom, depending on your taste for baseball or your taste for "inner-man/woman" stories. Under Sam Raimi's direction, "For Love of the Game" has a unique blend of personal/relationship development, really, REALLY getting inside Billy Chapel's head, and real-time/flashback moments that give this picture its balance and appeal. Some "professional" entertainment critics whose musings I follow, either for laughs or information, have called Kevin Costner's acting abilities "wooden", "lackluster", "impersonal", or lacking the "human touch". In most cases, they are far off the evaluation mark---as far as I'm concerned. It is so in this case. You might as well use the words "gushy-mushy drivel" to sum up their writings about "For Love...." The relationship between pitcher (Costner) and catcher (John C. Reilly) establishes the soul of this baseball tale. The prologue photos of Billy Chapel gives a peek at how he developed his "love of the game". It's been his WHOLE life. Catcher Gus Sinski(Reilly) knows his teammate virtually inside out and can read Chapel's mind looking through the cage-like mask. Thus his comment late in the movie "You're worn out. You don't have any stuff on the ball. But WE (his team-mates) are here for you NOW". And so they are. Balancing the baseball drama is a relationship one. Enter Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston), a woman who does NOT want any one else in her life right now, especially a man whose focus seems to be on ONE thing (baseball), rather than people and what makes them tick. Jane likes her life just the way it is right now, and wants no complications, thank you very much! Ms. Preston's acting ability is tested over and over again as Chapel swings in and out of her life. Both Billy and Jane wish very much not to ask or answer the question: "Now tell me about YOU". A breach is made in this relationship wall by a very sneaky tactic: a very personable, extremely confused and angry teen-ager, Heather Aubrey (Jena Malone), Jane's daughter. We finally get a peek at what we need to know to make this more than just a "chic flick" or "guys game". Check it out for yourself. The baseball side of the balance scale is fleshed out by rabid, in-your-face Yankee fans, and a baseball announcer whose remarks, especially when things get tight, become prosaic enough you'd think a university English major had written them. The relationship side is given depth by incidences which reveal why neither Jane nor Billy will risk answering the question "WHO are YOU?" Adhering to the spirit and the letter of reviewers' agreement with Amazon.com, I can say no more, though I'm really itching to do so. Maybe they'll let me put it this way: Recall Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in "Jerry MaGuire". Jerry's last words were: "You...complete me". Compare it to "For Love of the Game".

Rating:
Summary: for love of the game
Review: this was a great movie about a mlb pitcher, in possibly his last game, looking back on the last 5 years of his life with his gf, jane. i thought kevin costner was great.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bull Durham or Field of Dreams
Review: If you're expecting to see another heart stirring Field of Dreams or hilarious Bull Durham performance out of Kevin Costner, then don't watch this film. The movie is less a baseball movie than a relationship movie, and not a very interesting one at that. Although the movie has a few interesting moments, such as a compelling scene where Costner "gets in the zone" to pitch and turns off the crowd noise around him, most of the movie was pure oversentimental drivel.

As I recall, I fast forwarded through about the last 30 minutes of the DVD, hoping, praying that the film would somehow redeem itself with something interesting to watch. Save yourself the time on this stinker: it didn't improve...

Rating:
Summary: Costner's "perfect" as a baseball player
Review: I agree with everything in Chad Spivak's review - I think this is a great movie to watch MORE than once, but I didn't see anything mentioned about the great music that goes along with the story. I especially liked "Paint It, Black" and Garth Brook's "It Don't Matter to Me".

I have this in video, now I'll be getting it in DVD too!

Rating:
Summary: Focus, Focus, Lose out on Life
Review: For Love of the Game is one of my favorite movies of all time. Usually sports themes aren't among my favorite, but this film is about so much more than sports... it's about life. It's about figuring out what life is all about before it's too late. What's important? Why waste your best years on a game, where sports agents will throw you away before your prime? It's about love, and throwing that away for "The Love of the Game." Buy it, enjoy it and learn about focus, love and what's really important in life.

Rating:
Summary: Just a bad bad movie
Review: This movie lacks everything that a decent movie requires.