REWIND REVIEW: Borg Vs McEnroe

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on January 20, 2022.

(M) ★★★★

Director: Janus Metz Pedersen

Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, Scott Arthur, Tom Datnow.

Tracksuits. Fuck yeah.

There aren't a lot of tennis movies. The majority of sports films seem to be about boxing or baseball, which is a fair indication of the American domination of both cinema and sport.

Amazingly two great tennis films landed around the same time back in 2017. One is the excellent Battle Of The Sexes, and the other is this fascinating Danish/Swedish/Finnish co-production. Both are outstanding partly because they're about more than just tennis, but are also quite faithful to the sport their celebrating.

Borg Vs McEnroe builds to the 1980 Wimbledon final, which is widely considered one of the greatest Grand Slam finals ever played, was the peak of the rivalry between Swedish wunderkind Bjorn Borg and American firebrand John McEnroe.

What makes the film fascinating is the way it explores the psychology behind elite sportspeople. The Borg-McEnroe rivalry was iconic because of their "fire and ice" temperaments - Borg was seen as robot-like and emotionless, while McEnroe was the swearing-and-spitting "superbrat". This would have made it easy to make McEnroe the villain, but the story exceeds expectations by making us understand and even empathise with McEnroe somewhat. 

It also argues the two athletes were, for all their differences, incredibly similar; that Borg merely internalised what McEnroe let out. Both men are driven by a fear of losing, and almost everything in their lives is built around this phobia of not being the best. This notion is highlighted to show what set them apart, along with the sacrifices made along their journeys.

The drive and tenacity of them both, and how that manifests, keeps the film interesting, even as the story moves slowly and feels occasionally padded. It also suffers a little from focusing mostly on Borg, when McEnroe comes off as the more interesting character. It should be noted this is not the fault of the stars - Gudnason is wonderfully intense and "behind the eyes" as Borg, while LaBeouf deftly avoids making McEnroe feel like a caricature, which would have been easy to do. 

But the pay-off is great. Director Janus Metz Pedersen thankfully dedicates the last half an hour to the match itself, which is suitably intense, making a good mix of close-ups of the actors playing shots and body doubles for the rallies. The whole thing looks great, from the era replication to the nice use of short focus to highlight the isolation of the tennis stars.

Between this and Battle Of The Sexes (I haven't seen King Richard yet), it makes you wonder why there aren't more tennis movies.