Borg vs. McEnroe (2017)

Directed by Janus Metz Pedersen. Starring Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Tuva Novotny, Stellan Skarsgård, Robert Emms, Scott Arthur, Björn Granath, Jane Perry, Tom Datnow, Jason Forbes, Mats Blomgren, Julia Marko-Nord, Thomas Hedengran. [R]

Cursory joint-biopic depicting the rivalry between the two top-ranked men’s pro tennis players in the world entering the 1980s: meticulous, reserved, and publicity-shy Swede Björn Borg (Gudnason) and volatile, confrontational enfant terrible American John McEnroe (LaBeouf). The script’s armchair psychology hardly scratches the surface of why each athlete behaved the way they did, leaving all the dramatic heavy lifting to the lead actors and the recreation of the tightly-contested 1980 Wimbledon Finals where Borg was going for his fifth straight title, and those results are mixed. Gudnason is adequate but not subtle enough to express shades through Borg’s oft-stoic features (“Björn Bore”, the wags could call ‘im); LaBeouf gets by on shrewd casting since both he and McEnroe insist(ed) on being “misunderstood a-holes”; and Neils Thastum’s camerawork is all over the place—creative angles and dynamic motion interrupted by the occasional out-of-focus shot or distractingly poor framing. Likely to appeal more to those who know very little about pro tennis and its history because studied fans may easily become listless dealing with the broad-strokes storytelling, a glut of unilluminating flashbacks, and a lack of suspense in its foregone conclusion. Borg’s real-life son, Leo, plays the younger version of his papa. Also known simply as Borg McEnroe.

50/100