The Long Game
A film concerning a Mexican American high school golf team in the 1950s sets up certain audience expectations. There will be sunlit greens (writer/director Julio Quintana worked with Terrence Malick), condescension and overt bigotry, setbacks, supportive wives and girlfriends, comfortingly nostalgic ’50s music, doubting family members, inspiring pep talks, a heartwarming victory. “The Long Game” has all that delivered with warmth and taste.
The movie is based on the true story of the Mustangs, five caddies who built their own golf course to practice on in the middle of South Texas and went on to win the 1957 Texas State High School Golf Championship. The film wastes no time getting there: Underneath an “I Like Ike” sign in Del Rio, Texas, there’s a store whose window reads “No dogs. No Mexicans.” JB Peña (a warm, likable Jay Hernandez) is the new superintendent of schools, he hopes to realize his dream of joining the local golf club, he thinks being nominated by his close friend Frank (Dennis Quaid), who fought with him in the Marines, could overcome its history of prohibiting members of color. One club member tells JB: “I’m afraid there’s just no place for you here.”
JB meets the young caddies when one accidentally drives a golf ball at his car and shatters its window; instead of punishing them, he gives them an opportunity to help him start a golf team at their school. The standout is Joe (Julian Works), who initially declines but soon joins up; when Frank sees they’re so committed they’ve built their own holes to practice on well.
Some of JB’s goals for his players are at odds with each other. He wants them to tuck in their shirts and be respectful and fit in look like they belong there so much so that he tells them not to speak Spanish on the golf course. “The most important thing,” he tells them, “is for people to see Mexicans golfing.” But he also wants them to be proud of who they are, which can mean not fitting in. So when Joe says he doesn’t want to “perform in front of rich bastards who don’t respect me,” JB understands that fitting in only takes them so far.
Some of it is too predictable. Even in a familiar genre, the team is mistaken for caddies and a young club member skims a caddy’s tip. Twice, a coach tells the team that life is like golf and asks them, “Don’t you want to show them what you’re made of?” But Quintana avoids some cliches skillfully. The white assistant coach isn’t saving (or saved by) them. The incidents leading up to the state championship are well edited and chosen, giving Jaina Lee Ortiz ample opportunity to shine as JB’s sympathetic wife who has her own struggle and her own golf skills. Joe’s father knows how he would fit in and tells Joe not to play golf because people will laugh at him words that echo later as Joe says them to his girlfriend, who wants to attend a writing program.
“The Office’s” Oscar Nuñez plays the school principal whose connections come in handy; Cheech Marin (back on the golf course after “Tin Cup”) is endearing as always as the golf club groundskeeper, who wears a cage like piece to keep him from being hit by stray balls, the team visits two diners, one where they’re refused service and one across the border where they expect to be at home but are jeered at for being American; JB faces his own moral dilemma when he’s presented with a bribe and a threat to get him to end this program.
Anyone who knows this genre knows there will be some metaphors about life connected with golf in fact, it seems that more metaphors have been inspired by golf than any other sport. Maybe it’s because of its being out there beyond individual eyesight or operating on an honor system without referees or not having wildly cheering fans in bleachers or involving meditative walking between holes or businesses playing it or economics limiting it to those who can afford making it associated with wealth and power.
In golf, the long game is about power, distance and direction. The short game is when the player approaches the final shot into the hole control, strategy, fine-tuning. For this team and their coach, the long game is whatever it takes to play and get on track to a championship, even if that means smiling at insults and swallowing their pride when the competition cheats. But ultimately it’s not about golf but dedication, resilience and finding out you can do better than your dreams.
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