In “National Champions” by Ric Roman Waugh, two student athletes decide to launch a players’ strike two days before a championship game in which their participation is crucial. It’s a story ripped from the headlines of at least a few years, and a topic about which there has been much debate. So it may or may not be surprising that a single two-hour film fails to sufficiently capture its complexities, even from a compelling premise with a talented cast.
Stephan James (“If Beale Street Could Talk”) stars as LeMarcus James, the star quarterback who decides to run away on the eve of the Division I football championship game made possible by his efforts. Aided by his teammate Emmett (Alexander Ludwig, “Bad Boys for Life”), LeMarcus escapes from the protective enclave of the team hotel and announces to the media a plan to hold the match hostage in exchange for a complete overhaul of NCAA rules, compensatory packages. for student-athletes and protections for young players sidelined by injury.
Head coach James Lazor (JK Simmons) is understandably disturbed to discover his player’s political gamble, but his problems are bigger than “just” the potential loss of his first national championship; not only does the NCAA back Lazor to ensure the game is played, thereby guaranteeing their profits, but the coach’s long-suffering wife, Bailey (Kristin Chenoweth), decides to leave him for an academic (Timothy Olyphant) at the very moment when the crisis explodes.
Working with his assistant coach Dunn (Lil Rel Howery) and two overzealous team boosters (Tim Blake Nelson and David Koechner), Lazor desperately tries to find LeMarcus and knock some sense into him before anything else he and his star player he worked for is crumbling around them. But as kickoff looms on the horizon, NCAA director Mike Titus (Jeffrey Donovan) decides to take matters into his own hands, recruiting a mysterious “fixer” named Katherine (Uzo Aduba). to extract incriminating information to discredit LeMarcus, initially. about his fitness for professional sports and later about his culpability in a bar fight that seriously injured a passerby. The negotiation quickly turns into a war of attrition, with principles and basic humanity on LeMarcus’ side, and corporate power unwilling to risk its position or profits on the other.
The first film this one brings up is Ivan Reitman’s 2014 “Draft Day,” in which an NFL general manager must deal with a seventh-round draft pick, his girlfriend’s recently announced pregnancy and the legacy of the his father’s legendary coaching career. Reitman’s film is a confusing game of chess in which Kevin Costner’s character attempts to control the board, and perhaps that’s why it’s more enjoyable (and ultimately more memorable) to navigate than the one -this ; Despite the thorny real-life politics of student athletics and the billion-dollar college-athletic industrial complex, Waugh wants to empathize with each of the characters involved in this negotiation, or at least for the audience to understand their point of view with the same clarity as everyone else. that of others, and it muddles LeMarcus’ point of view in a way that makes you want to give up instead of taking sides.
Given its geographic limitations — characters routinely gather in small rooms or confined spaces for serious, hushed conversations — it’s understandable to assume that this was another pandemic production. But the story, written by Adam Mervis, was based on his own play. Waugh, who directed the third film in the “…Has Fallen” franchise, has a lot to work with as a filmmaker but not enough precision to draw out the individual threads of each character’s motivation or investment, and yet minus the ability to weave them together. the complex logical and ethical tapestry that the subject deserves, or at least demands.
Meanwhile, a synopsis of Mervis’s original play characterizes it as a comic drama, a tone which either the writer did not translate or which Waugh completely ignored; Mind you, it’s not clear how this topic would be explored in even a vaguely “funny” way without turning into a long episode of “Ballers,” but the film is virtually humorless aside from a few friendly exchanges between the players and a re-depiction of the “Ezekiel 25:17” scene from “Pulp Fiction”.
To the film’s credit, it uses Simmons in a markedly different way than anyone who saw his Oscar-winning performance in “Whiplash” might expect. Rather than relying on his terribly authoritarian bona fides, he’s persuaded to deliver a turn that seems halfway between his role in Damien Chazelle’s debut and the father he played in Jason’s “Juno.” Reitman, determined to get the game back on track, sincere about caring for his players, but desperately clinging to what was until now the only thing he thought he could count on. James is a bit of a cipher as a principled quarterback, who of course has just enough skeletons for the NCAA to hang over his head in exchange for dropping the strike. But the young actor continues to look for interesting projects en route to those that utilize his talents as well as, for example, “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
Meanwhile, as Katherine, Uzo Aduba prepares for his Oscar reel with a performance that oscillates between a kind of cruelty that actresses rarely get the opportunity to explore and a painful identification with the plight of athletes who toil in the shadow of LeMarcus that she exposes in an explosive monologue.
Of course, if you haven’t been paying attention to the news over the past six months, you wouldn’t know that the dilemma at the center of this film has been at least partly resolved; student-athletes can now and do receive compensation for some of their activities. It’s hard to know exactly whether this weakens the weight of this morality play or simply delays its impact, but ultimately Waugh doesn’t give it the punch needed to drive home the emotional weight of LeMarcus’ decision to throw the strike, and even less the concentric side. resulting (and non-resulting) circles of repercussions.
Is the title “National Champions” meant to be a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the control and commerce surrounding college sports, or simply a winking response to the possible outcome of a game the public has never seen play ? Viewers may not think they know the right answer, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the filmmakers do either.
“National Champions” opens Friday in U.S. theaters.
