The Sport Movie

Imagine a genre all by itself!

With enough of the sport movie coming out in all languages, it certainly is getting more crowded, don’t know about better though.

Right from Marty to Rocky to Any Given Sunday. We have seen enough of these back in India also. Remember Awwal number 1? Technical advances have certainly been made with slick product like Lagaan, Chak De and Iqbal. Or even a story on gully cricket, very close to the heart of everyone who’s ever played in a soma or mrc: Chennai – 28.

Well am not trying to chronicle the rise of the sport movie nor make a commentary on the same. This is about what I think is my perfect sport movie.

My perfect sport movie is one when there’s no sporting action. Yup you read that right, absolutely no sporting action.

Yes in most sport movies this is the highlight but in my book it’s no big deal. Any sport set piece in a movie however great is never going to match up to the real thing. AND YOU KNOW WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE END.

The real cool part is if any movie manages to capture anything about what goes on behind the scenes. The Wrestler I thought managed to do this beautifully. (Hey don’t take my word for it Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson says he quickly moved into acting to escape this fate which befalls many professional wrestlers and agrees with the film). As his daughter so eloquently puts it Randy the Ram is a fuck up. And he knows it and accepts it. Even in his extremely small and futile attempt to clean up and live a normal life he’s not really clear as to what he’s doing. And of course like all sport movies he comes back…..but with an ending which I thought was perfect.

The movie manages to capture the motivations that drive the athlete rather than relegating it to a montage. That was the real victory.