Right off the bat, I know Glen Owen’s Signing Tony Raymond is technically a football movie because Moneyball is a baseball movie. Oddly enough, though, the two pictures this film made me think of while I was watching it were a couple of basketball movies. Namely, William Friedkin’s Blue Chips and Spike Lee’s He Got Game.
Okay, why? Well, while their characters are engaged and enveloped in the worlds surrounding a completely different game, the crossover occurs in the depiction of how naturally talented athletes, able to exert dominance in their chosen arena, face maneuvering, manipulation, and corruption at each turn toward their ascendancy.
Our industrious hero, Walt McFadden (Michael Mosley), is a special teams coach for a contender when it comesto college football. A high-profile university and a launching pad to the pro league. He’s honest, hard-working and sincere, and that’s kind of his weakness, the reason he isn’t moving up the food chain in the coaching staff.
Though he’s got the knowledge and the passion to be a great defensive coordinator, and though he received his current position, being anointed by his famous coach father-in-law, his ideas were stolen and repackaged, his value diminished. The time and need for a change is long overdue.
Enter the title character, high school sensation, and the next college football phenom, Tony Raymond. A future Hall-of-Fame player on the horizon. Though signing Raymond seems to be a foregone conclusion, Walt convinces his boss to allow him to be the man on the ground to ensure the signing goes off without a hitch.
“…the big-dollar, big-ego, big-business player recruiters are swarming like locusts…”
What follows is a personal odyssey, during which Walt must track down the elusive Raymond. Sequestered and protected by his community. The thing is, not everyone in town has Tony’s best interests in mind, and the big-dollar, big-ego, big-business player recruiters are swarming like locusts, primarily interested in the size of their cut for delivering this potential marquee player to the highest bidder on a silver platter.
They force McFadden to wade through many lies, distortions, extortion, and old-fashioned trickery to even get close to the Raymond clan, let alone young Tony himself. His mother Sandra (Mira Sorvino) is struggling under the weight of alcohol and drug addiction, on top of fighting off all the hounds coming to the door looking to take control of her only son.
But as time passes, McFadden realizes there is more to the family and scenario than simply the isolated setting and picturesque scenery. In a Jerry Maguire kind of way, he realizes the torrid nature of the horror shows young sports stars face once they’re labelled a commodity. You cross an invisible line beyond which you’ll never again know what people value you for. After an arduous and enlightening struggle, Walt and Tony (Jackie Kay) finally meet, and the real game-changer reveals itself.
Signing Tony Raymond is as feel-good as Moneyball, and it’s a treat to see turns from the comically tragic Sorvino, who reminds us why she won an Oscar, plus an awesome little cameo from Brian “Stone Cold” Bosworth, bringing the sly charm and confident cool as he did in his heyday.
But the surprising part of this picture is the point at which it stops being a sports movie of sorts, and transforms into a story about a man who learns on the job, that it’s the job that destroys the dream. And when what you love feels like hard work, it’s time to switch from offense to defense. Look at the blessings on your doorstep before fixating on something that might cost your soul to achieve.
"…Look at the blessings on your doorstep..."
