Kevin Costner’s new NFL movie is set in the male-dominated world of pro football. Here’s why it fails its potentially fascinating female lead.
Dale Robinette/Summit Entertainment
In the history of movies, there have certainly been far lousier female characters than Jennifer Garner's in Draft Day, but watching her storyline play out, I found myself thinking I'd rather have a film with no female characters than one given as little thought as hers. Ali is her name, and she's not so much problematic as just a prop for the plot, there to enable Kevin Costner's character, Sonny Weaver, Jr., the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, to man up, professionally and personally. She's the romantic interest who strides around the office in 5-inch stilettos and a semi-sheer blouse and, because the movie is blithely well-behaved for one about professional football, no one leers or even notices. And she's wasted potential, a figure that could have offered a glimpse of the female experience in an industry that's traditionally been very masculine.
Draft Day, which opens in theaters today, is about the NFL draft, and because of that is a film centered on and almost entirely about dudes. Which is absolutely fine! So is the far better Moneyball, of which Draft Day is a pokier, hokier cousin. Pro sports are overwhelmingly male-dominated, on the field and in the behind-the-scenes realm of managers, agents, owners, and coaches in which Draft Day is set, over the single day in which Sonny tries to help his team and save his own skin after a disappointing last season, facing pressure from the Browns' owner (Frank Langella) and coach (Denis Leary).
Summit Entertainment
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