PUTTING THE RACE INTO SPACE RACE: HIDDEN FIGURES (AND THE 'GO AND NO GO' CONDUNRUM)

I finally saw Hidden Numbers, and liked it a good deal. What is best about it is the way it reinforces the pain of the world of segregation with the same under-stated sense of daily living that those who lived with it experienced. We see clearly not only the ever-present fear, of stepping out of line, the constant de-humanizing by relegating people to second-class status, but also the debilitating effect Jim Crow had on the white people imposing it on their fellow citizens, the way they take their privilege for granted, recoil at the slightest stepping over that (usually) unseen line, and at the same time think of themselves as friendly, decent Christian people.

We saw this first-hand when I was an 11-year old kid and we took our first-ever family vacation to Washington DC and encountered segregated facilities at, of all places, the Washington Monument. Washington himself was a slave-holder, of course, but I didn't make the connection then. I asked my dad to explain 'whites only', and then asked 'but that's wrong, isn't it?' and when he said, 'yes it is but that is how they do things down here' he got cold-eyed by some guy, who I guess backed down from taking his racist grievance any further.

That is the strong point of the film, established from the start by contrasting the easy camaraderie between the three friends and the unspoken fear when a white state police officer stops to investigate their broken-down car. The power relationship is set from the start. This marks the subtly of the approach, culminating in the moment Katharine Johnson's confirmation of the figures John Glenn wants her to confirm before he will head into space are delivered, and then the door closes in her face. Glenn's character is an exemplar here: early on he extends himself to greet the Langley black women;  he is the first to accept Johnson for her talent, but he's also shown as a complete team player all through his launch into space.

All three of the leads are good, if perhaps a little too glamorous in their 60s retro looks, with Taraji P Henson exceptional as Johnson, whose math genius is essential to NASA's success. Kevin Costner's beneficent white man isn't too overdone--I wondered if his one-man integration of the ladies' rest rooms wasn't still unlawful in Virginia, and why it wasn't reported. It seems odd that neither Costner nor his scientists would have any idea of what an IBM computer was; I probably did and I was 10 years old. It was also interesting that the filmmaker's show an engineer who's a Polish-Jewish immigrant survivor of the Holocaust, but never mention Werner Von Braun, head of the space programme, whose V2 rockets were built with Nazi slave labour. But overall, it's a sort of Disneyfied version of the story, but not simplified like some of their sports films, and told, as I suggested, with restraint that parallels the restraint of its principals.

But one non-racial flaw jumped out at me, so important it's not just a quibble. Katharine Johnson's task was to calculate the 'go/no-go' point for Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. The angle of this departure from its elliptical orbit needed to be perfect: a little too much and the capsule is incinerated by the heat of re-entry, too little and it goes off into space, outside earth's gravity forever. This gets hammered into our consciousness repeated. So why then does the movie make the go/nogo moment occur long after Glenn has re-entered earth's atmosphere and survived the intense heat, as if it was an instant before releasing his parachute? This is such a major error, so obvious, and also loses the drama of hitting the go/no go precisely. Do they think we weren't paying attention to the science stuff? Or weren't they? Baffling.

It also appeared to me that Kevin Costner was both in the Langley labs and mission control in Florida at the same time, but movie stars can do anything. Maybe he found his own go/no go point. But what sticks out about this movie is the way it delineates the way people were forced to cope with an unjust system of institutionalized bigotry, and not just cope with it, but triumph within that broken system. That it is telling the story of these three real women makes it all the more successful.

DRAFT DAY: KEVIN COSTNER FINALLY FANCIES FOOTBALL

In a low-key kind of way, Kevin Costner has become to sports movies what Clint Eastwood was to westerns: the go-to guy who can change with the generations. Costner's been a baseball player (three times), a golfer, a cyclist, and a boxing fan (OK I'm stretching things a bit). Now, after a gap of 15 years, which is a decade and a half in sports terms, Costner is back in Draft Day, playing Sonny Parker, general manager of an American football team, the (real life NFL team) Cleveland Browns. We know for a fact this means trouble, because most of us have seen the real life Cleveland Indians baseball team embrace Charlie Sheen and Wesley Snipes in Major League! And this is football, and football is what Cleveland and Ohio are all about.

But Sonny has problems. He's the general manager, but his father was once the Browns' legendary coach, and Sonny fired him. The new coach (Dennis Leary) is an obnoxious ball of tightly-wound ego, making you wonder why Sonny hired him. The team is coming off a losing season during which they lost their star quarterback to a serious injury, and the bad finish which has earned them the number seven pick in the annual NFL draft of college football stars. Sonny has ideas about who he wants to choose with that pick, but Coach Penn has his own ideas, and even worse, Anthony Molina, the team's owner (Frank Langella) wants him to 'make a splash' with the fans, and trade up in the draft to get the nation's biggest college star, quarterback Bo Callahan.

As if that weren't enough, Sonny's girlfriend has just told him she's pregnant. They've been keeping the relationship secret because she also works for the Browns, controlling their salary cap. And in the final touch, Sonny's mother wants to scatter his father's ashes on the team's practice field. On draft day.

That's the set-up for a behind-the-scenes look at American football that works as a cross between Moneyball and Jerry Maguire. And it does work a bit, especially when you consider there isn't actually any scene of football in the movie, apart from when Costner or the scouts examine game film of the prospects they're arguing about. This means you don't have to be fully versed in the game itself, though the concept of the draft, the use of draft picks, and even of trades of players, might be a challenge for some of the British audience. That's not because the movie doesn't explain, but because it often relies on American commentators to explain and embellish what's happening, and their faces won't mean much to the British audience, and their explanations do assume knowledge.

But this isn't rocket science we're talking about, and the concepts are pretty clear, certainly no fuzzier than any of the spate of recent films about financial chicanery on Wall Street. If you can understand shorting sub-prime mortgages, you ought to be able to follow trading three future first-round picks for this year's first pick overall. If you do understand the game well, you'll have to cut the film-makers a little slack; no GM alive would trade three years of number one picks, and even fewer than none would then trade them back! At least not without some further tweaking, but this is Hollywood, not Cleveland. Even worse is when Sonny wants to watch tape of the big college game between Callahan's Nebraska and linebacker Vonte Mack's Ohio State. Mack dominates early, then disappears. Suddenly, someone remembers he got thrown out of the game. You're telling me the scouting department of a NFL team "forgot" one of their targeted college players, a high first-round pick, was thrown out of his biggest game of the season? Even if no one had bothered to watch the game, or the tape, it would have been blown into an explosion high in the social media stratosphere!

This is important, because the roots of Costner's dilemma go back to more basic questions of character, both his and the prospects he's evaluating. He has doubts about Callahan which no one else shares. Which runs parallel to the decision he has to make over his girlfriend Ali (Jennifer Garner). This may be the part of the film which is actually harder to understand. Sonny's obviously a successful mature man. Ali works in football. She tells the coach that 'I am a Cleveland girl and I am football'. She loves football. And she's Jennifer Garner. Costner's only dilemma ought to be whether or not he should be having her babies.

The movie's well done, keeping the action moving, and making it look real, not least because it features real teams, NFL people, and TV announcers walking around. Of course we know the Seattle Seahawks won the last Super Bowl; they didn't finish last and have the first overall draft pick. Leary didn't really convince me as a football coach (he looks more like a quality control assistant) but Langella is brilliant as the owner, used to getting his way and dominant especially when he's in the same room as Commissioner Roger Goodell (playing himself). Langella's clearly relishing the role. There's an equally brilliant brittle turn by Ellen Burstyn as Sonny's mother: and when the twist that explains a lot of Sonny's insecurity is revealed it helps explain a lot. Football fans will recognise Arian Foster as one of the college players; Terry Crews (last seen on Newsroom as Jeff Daniels' bodyguard) plays his father, an ex-Browns star. Crews played for the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe, and I remember interviewing him: that's a pretty neat career arc in just 20 years. For him, at least.

But the film not only feels it has to over-explain, it then goes on to summarize and restate the obvious. Over and over again. Repeatedly. More than once. They take one good idea, sprinkle a little fairy dust on it, believe in themselves, and make it into a movie. That sort of thing. Of course real announcers would be a little less moronic, a little more analytical, and, but...wait...what? those ARE real announcers. Oh no!

But the film rests with Costner. His seriousness helps it stay anchored, even when director Ivan Reitman seems to be more concerned with comedy, or split screen techniques just for their own sake. The film needs that stolid sense that Costner projects. I compared him to Clint Eastwood at the top of this piece, but that was just on subjects of films (and really Wesley Snipes may be running Costner neck and neck on sports movies). The classic actor whom Costner resembles most is Gary Cooper—strong and silent, able to play sensitive, and occasionally funny when playing off hos own wooden exterior (think of Cooper in Ball Of Fire or Costner in The Bodyguard). Cooper's Pride Of The Yankees is Costner's Field Of Dreams. Open Range is Costner's High Noon. Cooper's Sgt. York is Costner's Dances With Wolves; Court Martial Of Billy Mitchell is JFK, Morocco is No Way Out and so on. Costner may wrestle with his conscience in most movies, but the match is almost always tilted one way.

If you're a football fan you'll enjoy draft day, and if you're not the most knowledgeable fan you might pick up a little bit about how the business works. If you're not a fan, you'll still able to follow the twists, and if you liked the gushy bits of Jerry Maguire, Jennifer Garner won't disappoint you. Draft Day is worth an evening, whether in football season or not.

 

Draft Day opened on release Friday 3 October, and is also available for download.