Cinema
Tin Cup
(15, selected cinemas)
Bunker mentality
Mark Steyn
Halfway through Tin Cup, one of the PGA golfers mentions that he once took part in some `pro-am shit for some asshole movie star' — and suddenly you're struck by the strange lack of golf pictures (except- ing, of course, The Eagle Has Landed, Bye, Bye, Birdie, Rocky Fore and, for an abso- lutely cracking Bogey, Casablanca). There aren't many baseball movies, either, because, for decades, baseball was regard- ed as box-office death. But, given that, until recently, no self-respecting actor con- sidered himself a star until he had his own pro-celebrity tournament, it's surprising more haven't felt the urge to play a round on the old celluloid fairway. The director Ron Shelton, who came up with a splendid exception to the baseball kiss-of-death rule (Bull Durham) and made a respectable shot at basketball, too (White Men Can't Jump), has now decided to have a go.
By comparison with those predecessors, a golf movie is a daunting prospect. Unlike baseball and basketball, golf is not obvious- ly — that's to say, cinematically — heroic: there's no physical contact, or, indeed, any visible exertion. But Shelton's achievement is to slow the film to the same leisurely pace as a lazy round on a summer's after- noon: Tin Cup is ambulatory, unhurried, laid-back, and gradually it draws you in.
Even more impressively, the director has performed the same trick on his star: from Dances With Wolves through JFK to Water- world, Kevin Costner has been getting more and more pompous and leaden; here, as Roy `Tin Cup' McAvoy, he gives a won- derfully relaxed comic performance, mean- dering through the film with a winningly goofy smile and nothing much in the way of costume except slacks and a sweaty under- shirt. Roy lives in a Winnebago he won in a bet and coaches at a seedy driving range in a nowhere West Texas burg called Salome. It lies not on that central thruway of the American Dream, Route 66, but instead on Route 67, a forlorn highway which on the map seems to nosedive straight into the Rio Grande: an appropriate place for a sportsman of terrific promise whose career prospects have gone south.
As you can tell, we're not talking country club here. If anything, Tin Cup's closer to crazy golf: every so often, the movie stops for some 50-buck bet that Roy can't, say, slice the ball through the bar, across the pond and dislodge the pelican from his favourite stump. He's an engaging combi- nation of lethargy and recklessness: his shots are great, but his game's lousy. He loathes lying back and playing safe, he resists the notion of par: if the film has a philosophy, it's `Par? Humbug'. He has a sidekick, played by Cheech Marin, called Romeo Posar, and he is beset by a poseur Romeo, a rival called David Simms, played by Don Johnson. When Rene Russo turns up demanding golf lessons, he's smitten. `From the moment I saw you,' he says, `I knew I was through with bar girls, strippers and motorcycle chicks.'
Inevitably, Simms, an old pal of Roy's who's now a top PGA star, proves to be her boyfriend. Johnson, formerly of Miami Vice and Barbra Streisand's boudoir, has always exuded a faintly cheesey sexiness — too tanned, too windblown, too teeth-capped — and he and Costner are well-matched. Rather than try to persuade us that golf is sexy, the film celebrates its cheesiness, and somehow imbues it with genuine sexiness: it's an odd achievement, but Tin Cup man- ages to be both hokey and seductive. The big-boned Miss Russo helps. In In the Line of Fire, she was effortlessly sexy with Clint Eastwood, but who isn't? In Outbreak, she was dead meat with Dustin Hoffman, but who isn't (Anne Bancroft excepted)? With Johnson and Costner, she's quick-witted and playful but always real. Roy sets out to win her hand by winning the US Open, and, in an unobtrusively smooth meshing of the golf and the love story, you really do feel that she's romanced by the audacity of Roy's long shots (in every sense): as she explains, `My problem is I've never been with a man who went for it.'
The premise is mouldy — supermart dame, dozy underachieving bozo male but, like Costner's West Texan drawl, the film is slyly self-deprecating in the way it sells itself. It knows, too, that, ultimately, it's one of those tall tales told at the 19th hole: the night before the Open, Costner, lying next to Russo in a trailer filled with waffle-eating lardbutts, over-the-hill strip- pers and other no-hopers, tells her, `It won't always be like this."Yes, it will,' she says. She's probably right, but, still, the film's second half, which is virtually non- stop golf, is thrilling.
`Our basics are more basic than your basics.'
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