Athletes go on strike seeking health insurance in this drama as a coach tries to forge his legacy.
In New Orleans, two college teams, the Cougars and the Wolves, are days from facing off in a major game — a game that will make or break the legacy of one coach. That would be James Lazor of the Wolves. One of the TV sportscasters hyping the game announces, “Monday night is about etching his name in the history books.”
His star quarterback, LeMarcus James, has other plans. Along with his best friend, a lesser player named Emmett Sunday, James is going on strike. Referring to his fellow college athletes, James says in one televised statement, “Over 12,000 of us participate in a multibillion-dollar business that doesn’t even give us health insurance.”
Written by Adam Mervis and directed by Ric Roman Waugh, “National Champions” is a drama whose timeliness has only been slightly compromised by the N.C.A.A.’s recent interim policy allowing athletes to earn revenue via endorsement deals. To go by this fictional movie’s argumentation, that real-life shift only slightly changes the overall picture for college athletes.
Coach Lazor is played by J.K. Simmons, but his character here is no “Whiplash”-style martinet. He’s ostensibly compassionate, and says he sees LeMarcus as a son. But, unsurprisingly, the coach’s patriarchal stance is later shown to be part of the problem.
The movie wants to make its points on class and race hotly. LeMarcus, appealingly played by Stephan James, is Black, and then again so is Katherine Poe (a simultaneously imposing and enigmatic Uzo Aduba), the ruthless lawyer the N.C.A.A. has put on a mission to destroy and discredit the quarterback. The vicious machinations echo an adage popularized by Jenny Holzer: “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.” But the movie dilutes its impact with lackluster direction of samey scenes — people in hotel rooms speechifying — and a distracting nighttime soap subplot.
National Champions
Rated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
