An evenly balanced guy movie and girl movie, and no mushier on one side of the scales than on the other. The attempt to accommodate two movies in one might account for the bloatedness of the project, though in fact the narrative structure seems designed for economy. Kevin Costner, whose mere presence can be taken as fair warning for bloat, is back again on the baseball diamond, this time on the pitcher's mound instead of behind the plate (see Bull Durham), as an old-school hurler nearing retirement after nineteen years with the Detroit Tigers, and taking the hill in Yankee Stadium on the last day of a dismal season, in a meaningless game to the Tigers but not to the Yankees. The progress of the game is interrupted for flashbacks to his long-running affair with a free-lance journalist and single mom, who has just broken off the relationship but cannot escape the big game on radio and TV as she awaits a flight to London at JFK. And wouldn't you know, as sure as Hollywood loves hyperbole, that the sore-armed old warrior would be working on a perfect game -- it couldn't just be a shutout, couldn't just be a tight game -- in what might well be his last one? The back-and-forth between past and present is tailor-made for compression -- tailor-made for highlights -- but the movement through both time zones is hip-deep in molasses. And director Sam Raimi does not seem disposed to crack the whip. Somewhat constrained by the gravity of his previous effort, A Simple Plan, Raimi is here virtually neutered: a slave to the stars, a pop-song deejay, a collector of clichés (the screen-filling shot of teammates walking shoulder to shoulder toward the camera in slo-mo), a company man. There is nary a trace of the frisky filmmaker of Darkman and The Quick and the Dead. Kelly Preston, Jena Malone, John C. Reilly. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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