Break Point movie review & film summary (2014)

Jimmy (Sisto) is a 35-year-old tennis player who can't find anyone to partner with him anymore because he's undisciplined, aggressive, and a self-destructive party animal. He was once a teenage champion and then went pro, but his career didn't work out as planned. Darren (David Walton), Jimmy's brother and one-time doubles partner, has been a substitute teacher for seven years, and lets off steam hitting around a tennis ball by himself. His only friend appears to be Barry (Joshua Rush), a little kid with a sad home life and questionable outfits. Barry starts out as one of those annoying children who only exist in movies: precocious creatures who draw a sad-clown adult out of his shell by dispensing wise advice. Jimmy and Darren's dad is played by J.K. Simmons, the kind of actor who can fill a simple line like "It's great to see you two together again" with the entire emotional theme of the film.

Jimmy, who has alienated everyone else in tennis, approaches his brother to partner with him for the pre-qualifying tournaments for the Open. Darren is wary but succumbs, not before making Jimmy promise to get his act together, stop drinking, and shape up. Jimmy moans and whines, throws massive John McEnroe-ish tantrums on the court. And of course there is a training montage, because what is a sports movie without a training montage? (I have a soft spot for training montages, so my comment is meant sincerely.) Once the men commit, they are single-minded about it to the point of obsession. They want to kick ass and win. As Martina Navratilova is supposed to have said, "Whoever said, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,’ probably lost."

The tennis sequences are where director Karas needed to step up his own game. Both Sisto and Walton are believable as tennis players (probably not to a pro, but good enough). Their serves appear powerful, their forehands/backhands look confident. But the tennis scenes (and there are a lot of them) don't create the necessary illusion that we are seeing actual tennis being played; there's no visual sense of tennis' exhilarating parabolae and power. One of the real strengths of "Miracle," the story of the 1980 Olympic hockey team, was director Gavin O'Connor's decision to cast college hockey players in the main roles, and then coach them in the rudiments of acting. The young inexperienced actors rose to the occasion all while playing pretty believable hockey. There's an Uncanny-Valley thing that happens sometimes when actors play professional athletes. You feel the artifice of it: it doesn't "look right." The best tennis moment in "Break Point" comes early on when Sisto and Walton stand opposite one another, close to the net, and bat the ball back and forth with no bounces in between. It's shot with no cuts. It feels real because it is real.

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