On sports and movies

I like sports. I like movies. I don't think I'd like sports about movies, but I do like movies about sports, though I'm more often than not disappointed by them. Perhaps I'm being a purist, but I can't stand how sports get twisted out of shape in movies. I don't care if it makes for better storyline or makes the audience buy more Gatorade. If you only saw movies about it, you'd think modern sport had nothing but shots to the top corner, haymakers and last second Hail Marys. Poppycock.

Here are some notable offenders and my ideas on how to make them better.

Rocky I, II, heck, all of them. Truth be told, I haven't seen all of them, but if the rest of the series is anything like what I have seen, I wonder if Sly Stallone has ever actually watched a boxing match. If heavyweight boxers squared off, lowered their guard and hit each other in the face repeatedly, we'd never get out of the first round. These movies would have us believe that boxing technique never progressed beyond that demonstrated by bare-knuckled, handlebar-mustachioed men playing you-hit-me-I-hit-you-till-one-of-us-falls-down in the 1800s. Modern boxing is not ro-sham-bo, Sly. There are things called feints, defense, footwork, combinations and strategy. Heck, people know how to duck, Sly.

My remake: Rocky is not pure power, guts and indomitable American spirit, but a patient, tactical master. He studies his opponents strengths and weaknesses, and wins matches on points by tiring out opponents, keeping them outside or staying inside, working the body and so on. Garbled dialogue and robot servants are kept to a minimum.

Bend it like Beckham. Everybody raves about this movie, and I just don't know why. Before I address its depiction of the beautiful game, let me hurl some other insults.

1) At bare-bones, its plot is the same as My Big Fat Greek Wedding: protagonist of an ethnic descent wishes to do something untraditional, her family opposes it on cultural grounds, she goes ahead and does it anyway and lives happily ever after. It's supposed to display the protagonist's growth as an independent person, but it characterizes the objecting family and their whole culture as static and unbudgeable, like those plywood cut-outs of opponents huddled together covering their genitals you use as a fake wall when practicing free kicks.

2) Keira Knightley. What is so great about her? Everybody seems to be in love with her these days, and apparently she was recently voted the UK's sexiest woman or something similar. From Jules in this movie to the pagan sexpot Guinevere in the sagging cesspool King Arthur to a flat, undeserving-target-of-infatuation character whose name I can't be bothered to look up in Love Actually, I've never thought much of her. A quick google of "Domino review" yields words like 'incoherent mess,' 'downright annoying,' 'fractitiously vapid action film' and 'boobs,' so it would seem she has yet to carry a movie on her back like, say, Cate Blanchett can.

3) David Beckham. Yes, he is a master of the curving free kick, and yes, his name and face are renowned world over. But there are other free kickers and personalities out there. How about Place it like Ian Harte or Drive it like Roberto Carlos or Sneak it by like Thierry Henry? Also, I must confess a bias here. Beckham used to play for Manchester United. I am a diehard Arsenal fan, ergo I must despise David Beckham.

4) I just visited the movie's official website to check character names and was immediately greeted with the loud thump of a boot connecting with a ball. I didn't realize my speakers were turned up so high and it fucking startled me.

The soccer in the movie is a ridiculous goalfest. In every second scene Jules or Jess effortlessly dribble through six defenders and the goalkeeper in plays that would make the highlight reel on Sportsworld. The game scores end up like 6-5, 6-3 and so on. This is frigging soccer, not the new NHL. Scoreless draws are common. 3-nil is a one-sided thrashing. Spectacular displays of ball control wizardry that weave through six hapless defenders are enacted by a guy named Pele and pretty much no one else. Certainly not David Beckham, nor Jules, nor Jess. As a final scornful sidenote, the heart throb coach Joe, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, was supposedly forced to give up his potential as a player due to a knee injury...yet we see him pulling dipsy-doodles and tricks with the ball that many uninjured players can never get right. I accuse this movie of lying to me.

My remake: The game is tighter, with stifling Chelsea-esque 4-5-1 formations and constant battles for possession in the middle third of the field. Jess can remain a star striker, but by scoring key goals in 1-nil victories, which she does by accurate passing and teamplay, with the occasional well-placed shot, though most certainly no selfish, odds-defying lone runs through the entire other team. Jules isn't a striker, but a tenacious, balanced defender given the task of shutting down the other team's dominant offensive weapon, Girl In Blue Shirt #5. Because defenders are heroes, too. Coach Joe's playing career was ended by a tackle so vicious that he lost both his legs, and now he feverishly puts his players through chesting and heading drills and nothing else, insisting that these skills form the essence of soccer. The movie-going audience appreciates that soccer is a complex, many-layered game in which a nifty tackle or penetrating cross-field switch of the ball are to be applauded like a subtle wine; goals are to be met with ecstatic hooting, hollering, back-slapping and clothes-tearing, like the biggest, best undergraduate bender ever.

Onward.

The Mighty Ducks. Oh wait, it's a series. I'm certain they're all awful, even though I only saw the original. Luckily I saw it years ago and I have forgotten a lot, as I'm sure I'd be writing into next week otherwise. But even as a twelve year-old, albeit one with a voluminous knowledge of hockey, the movie rubbed me in a smarmy, glitzy, Hollywood way. Let's start with its lasting legacy---no, not the actual NHL team---the flying V. Hockey is a game of space and movement. You very rarely see two or more teammates very close together unless they're battling opponents for the puck along the boards. Once the puck is gained, they quickly spread out for passing options, making use of space and letting the puck do the work, as they say. This is largely because in hockey there is bodychecking; two or more opponents standing close together can be smashed together, relieved of the singular puck, scored on and laughed at. So, given that the puck need only be carried by one player at a time, and the other team's job gets a lot easier if you line up like bowling pins, the flying V formation is not some revolutionary strategy but a stupid gimmick.

'But wait,' you say,'the V's brilliancy lies in the fact that the ducks can drop the puck back and push it forward within the formation, making it impossible for the defenders to know who to check.' True, in hockey only the puck carrier or the player making a play for the puck can receive physical contact from an opponent. Even before the post-lockout crackdown on interference, players could not randomly check, trip, board or hook each other while the puck was nowhere nearby. But that's exactly what happens in the movie! The flying V is left alone, but you never see a player in open ice without him being bowled-over a second later and if the camera is on the puck carrier the background is littered with collision upon collision. I wager that this, hockey's seemingly unregulated bullrushing, is one of the gimmicks the Disney execs latched onto in the boardroom brainstorm.

Michael Eisner: How we gonna sell this movie?

Lackey 1: Get this: hockey is played on ice. Ice hockey! Ain't that wacky?!

Michael Eisner: Yeah, and so is figure skating. Do kids bug Mom for the figure skating action figure at McDonald's? No. You're fired. To Lackey 2: What you got for me?

Lackey 2: Sir, in hockey apparently you can do this thing called "bodycheck." As far as I can tell, you can ram right into a guy as hard as you want, anytime you want. Kids like smashing things.

Michael Eisner: You're right. And the players wear all that armor, like warriors . We'll sell the frickin' dolls with spikes coming out of their shoulders and blood coming out of their mouths. Now this flick needs a name. Ice hockey, ice, ice---don't stop me, I'm free-basing here---what says ice? water---stream, lake, pond---pond!---ice---pond---duck---duckling! Ugly duckling!---The Ugly Ducklings! Nah, shit, shit---The Shitty Ducklings---nah, no good, kids wouldn't get the irony, gotta drive it home to the brats---The Super Ducklings, The Awesome Ducklings---The Mighty Ducks! Hot damn, did it all on my own. What the hell are you doing here? You're fired.

Lastly, I'm sure hockey is played in Iceland, but they're not exactly a world power in the sport. Yet the movie would have you believe they are feared dominators, with nations like Canada and Russia mere also-rans. Also, in the conveniently-ignored real world, Iceland's national colour is not bad-guy black. I guess Iceland was just too irresistible to pass up. Oh well, at least one of Lackey 1's ideas stuck.

My remake: is an unmake. This movie, this whole series, is never made. Disney leaves hockey alone, the NHL never expands further south than Washington and the Montreal Canadiens win the Cup every year. Americans come to understand and revere The Hockey Sweater as the only story of childhood and hockey needing to be told.

Million Dollar Baby: Stands head and shoulders above the other movies here. I don't have near as much to complain about; I liked the movie a lot, and found the moments of cringe-inducing departures from sporting reality were few and far between. I'm no cynical, Bronx-accented, fedora-wearing, cigar-chewing ring obsessive named Turnbuckle Ted, but it looks to me like Hillary Swank really learned how to box in making this movie. The training scenes are convincing and her body is honed, silky, smooth---ahem. She looks to be in good shape. Her progress through the ranks in a flurry of Round One knockouts is not too common, but Mike Tyson was once so meteoric, and at least her opponents relent when dealt multiple blows to the face, unlike the apparently steel-skulled (or rubber-armed) boxers in the Rocky movies.

Now, before I present my criticism, I don't want to give the movie away. If you haven't seen Million Dollar Baby go watch it, then come back and read the rest.

I was disappointed by the title match, particularly by how we're expected to swallow the idea that the titleholder, Billie 'the Blue Bear,' played by Lucia Rijker, can get away with blatant cheating and receive no more than a warning from the referee. She grabs Maggie's head, elbows her and ultimately cold-clocks her after the bell; the ref either doesn't see or gives her a 'next time you'll lose a point' warning...like eight times. This is supposed to be a world title match, yet they must have hired a WWE referee, as he is apparently too distracted by the antics of managers or unruly fans to focus on the fighters. Given the match's significance, you'd also think that it would be recorded, that some sort of authority would be reviewing it after the fact and that they would see that Billie clearly sucker punches Maggie after the bell has rung to end the round...yet we later find out that Billie is declared the winner, as though she had not broken the rules at all. My complaints regarding the other movies produced little more than a rolling of the eyes when I saw them, as those movies are shite and I didn't truly expect accurate athletic portrayal in bad movies. But with Million Dollar Baby I was into the movie from the get-go and thought Maggie's development was convincing---thus my disappointment was ever the more profound when it relied on silliness to make its crucial turn.

My remake: Goddamn it, make Billie a more subtle cheater. Hell, just make Billie and Maggie extremely evenly-matched. There's loads of opportunity for permanent injury in boxing; falling on the corner stool after an illegal poke isn't necessary. And if that plot device must be retained, disqualify Billie in the end and take the belt away. With Maggie confined to a hospital bed and satisfied that she gave her all, I don't think it would make a huge difference.