BOOKS & ARTS
Cinema
No balls
Deborah Ross
Borg vs McEnroe
U, Nationwide
Borg vs McEnroe is a dramatised account
of one of the greatest tennis rivalries of
all time — between Bjorn Borg and John
McEnroe (the clue was always in the title)
— that doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it
should. It does the job. It gets us from A to
B. But it doesn’t dazzle. It doesn’t have the
dramatic smarts to lend either surprising
tension or excitement to otherwise famil-
iar events, or shed any new light on them.
It’s more the pt-pt-pt-pt of a stolid baseline
rally and now, you will be thankful to hear,
that’s it with the tennis puns. (I only had
two anyhow.)
The film stars Sverrir Gudnason as
Borg and Shia LaBeouf as McEnroe and
it all plays out in the lead-up to their most
famous showdown. That is, the 1980 Wim-
bledon final that ran to five tempestuoussets. For Borg, the cool Swede, a win would
mean a record-breaking fifth consecutive
title, but only if he could see off this Ameri-
can upstart with the volatile temper, potty
mouth and wild, frizzy hair. It also interlaces
their back stories although, being a Scandi-
navian production, it is far more interested
in Borg than in McEnroe. The film couldBorg stares dishily out to sea, but what
is he thinking? We never find outquite easily have been called plain Borg. Yet
we still don’t get under his skin. Far from it.
Mostly, he is allowed to stare deeply into
the middle distance like some dishy Scandi-
noir detective or, perhaps, a character from
a Bergman film. But what is he thinking? We
never find out.
Directed by Janus Metz, and written by
Ronnie Sandahl, the film initially depicts
the players as polar opposites. Borg is
shown in his Monaco apartment, staring
deeply and dishily out to sea, while McEn-
roe watches TV footage of himself, remon-
strating with a referee, prior to appearing
on a TV chat show. ‘You and Borg are as
different as two people can be,’ the chat-
show host tells him.
Borg is ‘Ice-Borg’. He is unflappable,
seemingly emotionless. He spends the night
before matches testing the strings on nearlyThe rivals: Shia LaBeouf as John McEnroe and Sverrir Gudnason as Bjorn Borg in Borg vs McEnroe