"Bull Durham" - romantic sports comedy with ideal end
A movie that looks more than real, and the touch with the game is just perfect
In sports, winning and losing can be a daily occurrence. Sometimes you win, but sometimes you're on the losing side. Therefore, films that show the reflection of both sides are among the best sports productions. One of them is "Bull Durham", or "Bull Durham" in English. It's baseball's version of Wall Street, in which the winners inflict great damage on the losers.
The film is billed as a romantic comedy, but right from the start, Susan Sarandon is in a great scene that blurs that notion considerably. She holds a meeting with two new players from the local team and explains that every year she settles on one player to spend the season with. This time, however, it is down to two who make it to the finals.
A lot of the movie consists of mostly competitive moments that give you a chance to see who loves whom, who can really trust whom and whether the answers to these two questions match up as personalities.
Bull Durham “plays a lot of baseball. This movie was directed by Ron Shelton who has spent quite a bit of time in the minor leagues and his experience definitely shows. Those of you who understand the game will recognize his handwriting immediately. There are scenes that are one to one with reality. An example of this is when a player is called into the office and told that he will not get a new contract with a better financial reward. Instead, he is being offered a possible coaching job with the organization in the future. In any case, no one wants something like that, they don't want to think about the distant future and listen to lies that just close their eyes for a moment.
One of the main characters in the film is Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner. He's an aging catcher and minor league veteran who knows it all. Tim Robbins plays a hot young pitcher who plays great but can't control his emotions and definitely lacks maturity. Davies comes to the team so he can help the rookie manage the tension, but the two are inevitably drawn into a battle with each other, even before they are introduced as new competitors for the upcoming campaign.
The seasoned player immediately notices that Robbins' character does great when he's not thinking about what he's doing. Any moment of reflection results in a very poor roll from him. This leads to a challenge from Crash Davis, which Abby Calvin "Nuke" LaLouche begins to overthink and is simply unable to follow through on.
Much of the film also takes place in the bedroom of non-Annie Savoy, played by Sarandon. She provides the soundtrack to the film and completely changes the philosophy of baseball, offering her heart and body to one player per season. Doubts remain as to whether, had someone else played the role, it would have been as successful. Sarandon presents her character as a woman who loves baseball and the players, who tries to help her hometown team in this way.
It remains only to answer the question why she limits her relationships to only one season. For baseball fans, this is an easy task. Every good player from the lower leagues moves immediately to the higher leagues, and Annie is only looking for classy players to tap on the shoulder.
The love triangle unfolds throughout the season and doesn't seem to matter much to a team that constantly vacillates between wins and losses. Annie and Crash's relationship gets a little more than serious, and he suspects that she might have a more serious relationship with him. At the same time, the younger contestant is simply enjoying his role of being a lover. She helps him get on a winning streak, and then things start to go awry as Newk also decides he can get more serious about the woman.
Bull Durham is a true treasure when it comes to sports movies. This is a production that is aware of the game of baseball, but not so much about love. The story seems like a completely realistic romantic fantasy, but in the real world everything would shatter into pieces with ease. However, this is a film that makes us believe in love, shows us that lovers can break away from inevitable fate. Its ending seems absolutely perfect, because the impossible becomes possible, and that's what everyone wants to believe.