Williamson's play is a masterpiece, Bruce Beresford should have been an ideal director, and the cast is perfect - every single one. But the film isn't much. It's fine, but no way near the play.
The problem is easy to spot -in a desperation to "open the material" the play has been restructured so it is presented chronologically. We start with the champion player (a skinny John Howard, which is weird) being offered money and Graham Kennedy signing a personal cheque. Exchanges that all unfolded in real time on stage are spread out on screen - over at least a month, with a coda of the grand final that would be months later.
I didn't mind the grand final coda, it was very satisfying to see John Howard integrated into the team, but the rest it was a mistake. It dissipated the tension. The play piles it on - coach Jack Thompson is about to be fire, so is president Kennedy, so is top player Howard, Harold Hopkins is leading a strike, Alan Cassell and Frank Wilson are trying to organise a coup... it's wonderful. Here it drags on. The dialogue is the same, but time is strung out instead of compressed.
They just should have filmed the play - you could have opened it up by ducking into different rooms and parts of the ground, like Beresford did in Don's Party but stringing out the time line doesn't work. Also some exchanges which felt naturally like intimate talks take place in all these public arenas.
So the film doesn't work as well as it should.
Which is a shame since the casting is perfect - Wilson, Cassell, Howard, Hopkins, Thompson... and most of all Kennedy, who is magnificent.
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