Film: Borg vs McEnroe

As if the devil had a hand in it, after The Battle of the Sexes, we have another film about rivalry on the court.

Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier: great sports champions are never alone. In tennis in the early eighties, there was quite some commotion due to the rivalry between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. They were both champions, but only one of them could win the competition and they seemed to be polar opposites.

Borg was a detached Swede who never lost his cool, while his pent-up American opponent lost his cool constantly. The title of this Scandinavian film is slightly misleading: Borg gets much more attention than McEnroe. He was apparently just as great a hothead as the American, but his coach drilled him on supressing his emotional outbursts.

Actor Sverrir Gudnason looks a lot like Borg, and the panned Shia LaBeouf plays McEnroe with the necessary intensity. This sports drama is certainly not boring, and it is by no means badly made. At worst, it is somewhat superficial. The focus on the legendary Wimbledon final in 1980 does make the film veer dangerously towards sports reporting rather than cinema. Deuce.

> Borg vs McEnroe. DM, SE, dir.: Janus Metz, act.: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård