A Keaton Review: Borg Vs. McEnroe
By: Keaton Marcus
Genre/Sports/Drama
Age Rating/14+
Lemonradar/80% sweet
Is It Worth Your While?
By the summer of 1980, Björn Borg is the best tennis player on and off of the court with four Wimbledon championships and the only thing standing in the way of his fifth trophy is very highly talented, but extremely brash and rude American tennis player John McEnroe who is rookie and is looking for his first Wimbledon; With only a shaky three days till the big championship Borg trains hard in his fancy home in Monaco, but McEnroe’s sheer confidence continues to break Borg’s almost unshakable attitude.
How Was The Cast?
Scanning the cast members we see actor Sverrir Gudnason performing four-time Wimbledon champ Björn Borg, surprisingly we see a grand return from actor Shia LaBeouf playing John McEnroe, the swearing, confident American rookie tennis player looking for his first Wimbledon and finally Stellan Skarsgard to perform Borg’s overprotective and prepared coach, Lennart Bergelin. Like I said driving the extremely important and valuable role of Björn Borg is actor Sverrir Gudnason on his first feature movie after doing TV flick Wallander with Kenneth Branagh. Considering Gudnason’s Borg is more portrayed as the main character in Borg Vs. McEnroe, the actor did have much more considerable room to play the amazing tennis player, colliding a solid narrative, good talent and the right fitting character Gudnason was definitely able to conjure up massive successes in his performance hitting almost every bar that needs to be hit in order to perform a believable Borg. Playing almost side character is actor Shia LaBeouf (Transformers franchise, Surfs Up, Eagle Eye, Disturbia etc.) who features a grand return to the movies life as John McEnroe. This performance features some of LaBeouf’s best work in a long time, giving an all-out realistic McEnroe is extremely hard, but LaBeouf is exactly perfect for the role giving an outrageous amount of heart, providing laughs (with lot’s and lot’s of swearing) and using his previous strong talents of former films to make a well-directed, well-scripted, despite-little-to-work-with perspective on the ridiculous character of John McEnroe. Performing the light, but still considerably important character of Lennart Bergelin, Borg’s coach and mentor is actor Stellan Skarsgard known for Good Will Hunting, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Thor trilogy and The Avengers. Skarsgard really did not give it his all, he could have been the Coach Mickey of tennis, the actor did have his moments with Borg, but taking how good the performance could have been in perspective, this was massively disappointing featuring a slummy script and almost no temper, no heat which what should have styled the movie even more was not shown quite at all.
Is It Worth Your While?
Directing this movie is Danish documentarian Janus Metz who now directs his first-feature film, Borg Vs. McEnroe, after doing first TV series True Detective from 2014-2015, a considerably shaggy choice for directing such an important film, but overall still ended up a well-told perspective on the topic of tennis. Bringing the sport of tennis into wonderful cinematic fashion, Metz was a risky, but firm choice for the film creating a smart, fun story, giving the cast room to work with and most of all giving a real soul into the film. Also a magnificent start on real filmmaking, Janus Metz proved himself that he has talent, however despite the deep narrative and storytelling there were some common flaws such as the such shortness of the suspenseful, but surprisingly shallow final match between Björn Borg and John McEnroe and the disappointing fact that director Janus Metz plays it a little safe. The beginning of the movie starts with a title card explaining the grueling rivalry between the two titans of tennis, Borg and McEnroe which happens to be a little boring, but helpful along the movie, the storyline and plot sometimes are a little bloated and muddled, but it succeeds of telling the story of winning, hard work and never giving up with a great cast, directing, suitable narrative on the film’s side which helps you move along with the 1 hr 47 mins of almost a perfect way of telling tennis, in other words a home run compared to other Sports movies much less for tennis films.
Aging ‘Wimbledon Championships’
Extremely low on violence, middling on sexuality and high on language, Borg Vs. McEnroe will only be captivating to young teens, as it may bore younger kids. Violence wise, there is nothing to worry about despite some common rages with swearing on the tennis pitch from John McEnroe and a man does throw a teen boy to the ground while seeming uncontrollably angry at the kid. Something to really be concerned (but not too worrying) is about the language which is extremely high and used in many scenes by tennis player John McEnroe, common uses include f..k, s..t, motherf….r, bulls..t, t.ts, bastard, hell, crap and damn. Featuring mild, but some sense of sexuality shows brief scenes of topless women dancing at clubs, an engaged couple gets undressed for bed (nothing graphic shown), a man fiddles with women’s breasts at a public place, a man in the shower with nude butt shown and a teen has an inappropriate poster hung in his room.
Sports Films Compared
Borg Vs. McEnroe 80% sweet
Violence: ⭐☆☆☆☆
Sex: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Language: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Age Rating: 10+
Rocky 90% sweet
Violence: ⭐⭐☆☆☆
Sex: ⭐☆☆☆☆
Language: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Age Rating: 14+
Borg Vs. McEnroe 80% sweet
Storyline: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Cast: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Role Models: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Rocky 90% sweet
Storyline: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Cast: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Role Models: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
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