That was an excellent one.

Best movie ever!

Absolutely Fantastic

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The supposed gentleman's game, tennis is full of volcanic characters. Competitive singles is an exasperating exercise in strategic warfare: the closest one gets to physical chess. With very little distinguishing the top players in athletic ability, it all comes down cerebral strategy.Perhaps the ultimate clash of mental racket gods, the 1980 Wimbledon final, is finally depicted in film. Icebergian cool, super Swede Bjorn Borg clashes with the hot-headed, foul-mouthed American brat John McEnroe, in a gruellingly inhumane best of five sets match, on slippery grass, in front of British royalty drowning their strawberries and cream, with sugary tea.Sports movies are always an iffy proposition, but Borg vs. McEnroe gets it right. Not only is Sverrir Gudnason a dead ringer for Borg, he totally nails his obsessive mannerisms, and most importantly, brings the mystery man to life. Irrational nutbar actor Shia LaBeouf as the irrational nutbar tennis star John McEnroe, is the obvious lure here, but instead the focus is mainly on the secretive, misunderstood Borg. It's a relief to see excellent action sequences not marred by dodgy stand ins, and awkward editing. Also: retro short shorts and white tennis balls. This is a great tennis movie, and a pretty good movie movie.

I have no interest in tennis as a sport yet this is riveting to me since the movie is about the players, stardom and professional sports organizations not about tennis in particular. Suspect i could re watch this 20 years later and it would be as relevant then as it is now

In full disclosure, I am a tennis player and as a boy I idolized McEnroe. I admired Borg a great deal as well. What made this match and all of their matches so great and so riveting was their completely opposing approaches to the game. Borg was the greatest baseliner to play the game. It was nearly impossible to get get the ball by him. His steadiness and zen-like approach to the game gave birth to many baseliners in his wake, most notably someone like Andre Aggasi. McEnroe was was the first ever punk rock athelete. No player in history had shown so much anger and rage, but mostly so much desire to win. It was raw rock n roll. It was a bit of a paradox because though he was a punk rocker in his attitude and in his passion, his game was a throwback to Rod Laver. He was an artist on the court. On any given point you might see topspin forehands, slice backhands, drop shots, lobs, breath taking volleys, and backhand overheads. He had a complete game. While Borg was content to outhit his opponents, McEnroe was eager to cut the points short. He would take every opportunity to come into the net and display his artistry. Of course none of this is apparent in the film. The problem with sports films is that most actors are not atheletes. So a director has to be inventive in his camera work to cover the fact that his actors don't know how to play. A rally with Borg might go 15 Strokes. Tennis is about court position. For McEnroe to beat Borg he had to chose his spots. When is the right time to approach the net? Where do you hit the ball when you are there? Shia was quoted as saying that he despised tennis and he hopes to never play again. He clearly chose this roll, not to impress us with his tennis skills, but because he wanted to play McEnroe the man. This film unfortunately climaxes with the finals match at Wimbledon, normally something I would enjoy because after all this film is about tennis, but it is shot so horribly that you never see Borg hitting back 10-15 groundstrokes. You never see his unquie at the time, 2 handed backhand Vs Mac's classical one handed. You never see Borg trying to pass Mac at the net. You never see the tennis artistry of McEnroe at all in this film. The way it is shot you really only see the the players heads and quick 2 stroke rallies which is like going to see Miles Davis play Mary had a Little Lamb for 2 hours. I feel bad for tennis players because they will feel cheated like I did by this film, but I feel worse the non-tennis fans because they will walk away from this film and completely miss how revolutionary and inspiring these two great athletes are. They might just shrug and say "what's the big deal?"That is a crime.

I really enjoyed this. I thought both actors did a great job and both of them nailed their characters. The film lags a tad with the childhoods; however, overall it's just about the games and the tennis up to that epic final. And what a final! Thumbs up from me.