The Long Game

Another day, another Tarzan movie. The Long Game tells the story of 1950s golf in Texas, oh yea ... and they're Tejanos. Dennis Quade is the "good" white man who enables them. No, he's not the actual hero, but he tops the billing and is the necessary white man required for the story to happen. Where would we be without our savior? For example, he gets away with assault in the diner scene when the Tejanos were ultimately blamed. "Giant" did a better job of telling this particular secondary plot, and it was actually filmed in the 1950s. Its comparable diner scene, when Rock Hudson tore up the place and got the snot kicked out of him over 4-5 minutes, to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas" was cathartic for all the viewing audience (and proved his worth as an actor). But I digress. This script's dialogue was fairly formulaic. Jay Hernandez' character, JB Peña, is the placater, the voice of "assimilation." We, who are from immigrants communities, are not unfamiliar with this person. And over time, some of us have come to grips with these people, our neighbors, being more accepting of their experience, and the many bullets they took for the rest of us. There were a couple of truthful moments in the movie , e.g., the visceral shame when the Peñas and Mitchells threw the game to make the overlords comfortable (a constant, consuming, and exhausting exercise for us), well that was all too familiar and triggering. But the smiling (AKA grinning) afterward, sucking it up, the "it was stupid of me" scene with JB and Lucy immediately afterward, well that was unacceptable and unbearable. I presume this is some misguided effort to offer "balance" for the audience. Question: When the major theme is that of discrimination and racism, which are, by literal definition, part and parcel to imbalances of power, whom is this faux equity meant to appease? Shorter version: Hey folks, we are entitled to our anger. We are tired of smiling and grinning eating crow to make you feel better as some fallacious long-term strategy. These double standards must fricking end! And you are not the heroes of our story.

The problem with so many sports movies is that they don't actually care about the sport itself. The Long Game is no different. It seems as if nobody involved in the movie actually knows a thing about the game, and it seems as if most of the actors never had a club in their hands before they were cast in the film. Shots are shown obviously flubbed, but the film doesn't show where the ball goes, not ever. Sometimes you can see the actual ball shooting off to the side. The movie doesn't care. Their swings are terrible; at the end of the movie we see film of the real kids, now those kids know how to swing a club. I guess maybe if you nothing about golf, you might enjoy the story, but the writing is so bad and the dramatic tension is simply absent. They hit the ball around a bit and then suddenly they are in the state tournament. Uhhhh ok. Cheech Marin (always inexplicably in a ball cage even when he is standing around off the course) and Randy Quaid who doesn't really serve any purpose just sorta mail this one in. Great story what these kids accomplished. Too bad the movie just doesn't seem to care enough to do it justice.

Based on a true story that was little drama. A restricted Country Club in Texas does not allow JB Peña (Jay Hernandez) to join. As the local school superintendent, he recognizes five of his caddy shack students can play golf. He enlists the help of Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quaid). The film managed to build the characters of JB and student player Joe Treviño (Julian Works) with no relationship to Lee Trevino who learned to play in Dallas as a caddy. It was dull as compared to MacFarland. Nothing like winning a tournament to have Cheech salute you. The kids were told to speak English to blend in. I suspect that was added to explain why the entire film was in near English. It takes place in 1957 when Eisenhower's Mexican deportation program was in its waiting years. Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

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I am a non-golfer. I never played, and I never will. It is from my point of view not a real sport. Like pool, snooker it is a boring ball game, not enough physical and mental action, no real confrontations. I prefer sports like Tennis, or better football (soccer for you US people) But the movie is not. It is about passionate young and elder people, trying to find their way through the obstacles mostly unfair of life. It has a lot of very very nice, emotionally intelligent little scenes about wisdom and effect of our decisions and actions. I can't emphasize enough how well these scenes are made. So many characters well drawn. The director Julio Quintana born in the USA after her parents left Cuba shows he feels how Mexican immigrants felt. Not anymore Mexicans and yet not real Americans. No-man's-land.. I specially liked the symbolism in the scene were a golfers girlfriend explains how she intends to become a writer by already writing now shorts stories of peoples daily life. Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation. Actors are all great, but I fell for Jaina Lee Ortiz. It is a men sports, is it not still today? She is not even mentioned on the cover, standing far in the back. What a shame, She did not have too many words to say, so she made her presence mainly by her very subtle body and face expressions. Nevertheless she played a strong female character. She has great potential, and I hope we see more of her anytime soon.

The story had some potential, but the direction was outright awful. No depth to characters at all...the screenplay was quite rushed. Nothing worked, although the acting was semi decent, the story failed to invoke any emotions at all. Im surprised it has the rating that it has, that must have been because the viewers were forced to show support by the agenda of the movie, but in all honesty i think it did injustice to the agenda. If you are going to make a movie about a sensitive topic, then make sure you give it your everything. All in all a flat and boring movie, it was very difficult to keep myself seated for the last 20 minutes of the movie, it just became unbearable.

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If you love golf, or movies about the Mexican-American struggle in America, you'll love this move. I don't have anything emotionally invested in either and so as usual, as a big movie and history buff, I couldn't but help pick out the problems with this movie from those standpoints. And there are some problems. There were enough historical goofs and anachronisms in this movie that I ended up starting the "Goofs" section for this movie's IMDB page with a list. Go check that section out. Some lazy screenwriting here. From a filming standpoint there were two main problems. First, this movie was obviously not filmed in Del Rio or anywhere close to South Texas. The scenery of what is supposed to be Del Rio in this movie is filled with rolling hills, lush green grass, and lots and lots of deciduous trees. If you are at all familiar with the different regions of Texas, this area looks like the Austin area, home to a lot of film makers. The real Del Rio, and much of South Texas, would be flat, any grass not on carefully irrigated lawns would be struggling to stay green for much of the year, and palm trees would be as common as deciduous trees in the background. Second, the cinematography was as modernistic as the film makers could get with their budget. Lots of sweeping shots across distances that are so common and easily done these days with drone cameras. Lots of moving shots of the actors with a handheld camera, from far away to closeups. Thankfully, they used either Steadicam or optical stabilization in their cameras and so these shots didn't have that jittery handheld look that can cause motion sickness from watching the movie (the classic "Blair Witch" vomit cam). But, obviously, these very modern high tech (and now relatively cheap to do) shots take away from the historical feel of what should be a period piece set in 1956, when the only motion shots that were commonly done were on tracked dollies, and two or three camera fixed closeups were the norm. There was a section midway in the movie where the shots were reprocessed to look like the old 8mm film from that time period, I guess to throw in some of that old period piece look, but, again if you're familiar with the look of 8mm film, that was a bit too obviously reprocessed. Real 8mm film actually looks better than that segment. So, enjoy this movie as a golf buff or a righteous warrior for Mexican American civil rights. Or, actually you can enjoy it, somewhat, to spot the film making mistakes.

The Long Game

Great story and it's a historical event that we as del rio people use to inspire our youth. The fact that it didn't show that actual golf club or our historical land marks that make our town beautiful was sad. To take this man's story and mention certain locations that aren't historicaly correct is a crime. I understand that movies aren't like the books, but this book is an inspiration for triumph over segregation in the 1950s. Then for them to try and makes us look like criminals and parents that don't care about our children was personal to us. Every parent that was part of the 1957 team were supportive of their athlete.