A curve ball that misses the inside corner
Role of old scout tailored for Eastwood
Trouble with the Curve ★★ 1/2 Playing in English at: Angrignon, Cavendish, Colossus, Forum, Kirkland, Lacordaire, Marché Central, Sources, Sphèretech, Taschereau cinemas Parents’ guide: Coarse language, sexual references
Clint Eastwood was never known for his broad range as an actor — he starts at impatience and gets all the way to anger before he comes to a screeching halt at regret — and as he ages, he is becoming even more minimalist. In Trouble with the Curve, he plays Gus, a baseball scout with an old man’s cranky view of the modern world, a stance expressed with a pained grimace and a hoarse whisper. Lean, wrinkled, sour and still intimidating in a geriatric kind of way, Eastwood has stripped away everything but his formidable squint.
The result is a spare and iconic presence in the middle of a pretty squishy story about fathers, daughters and the corporate world. Trouble with the Curve is a comic melodrama of unlikely motivations, notable mostly for the way it adds a new notion — call it “Sandykoufax ex machina” — to the lexicon of sports movie clichés.
Gus is a scout for the Atlanta Braves, where he discovered everyone from Tom Glavine to Chipper Jones, according to Frank (a jovial John Goodman), the head of scouting and Gus’s sole ally on the team. As the latest draft approaches, he’s a warhorse whom the Braves are no longer sure of: For one thing, he is the only scout in the game who doesn’t use a computer, relying instead on well-honed instincts for a player’s heart. “Anybody who uses computers doesn’t know a damn thing about the game” Gus croaks, stopping just short of “make my day, punk.” No one mentions “moneyball,” and it’s just as well.
It’s a part that’s been carefully tailored for the star (first-time director Robert Lorentz has worked on several Eastwood films), and like other late-career Eastwood films such as Unforgiven and Gran Torino, it relies on our familiarity with his granite persona: Gus eats pizza and beer for breakfast, sneers at his friends and refuses to accept his age, or even the fact that he’s losing his eyesight, which is bad news for a baseball scout. He compensates by “hearing” good plays.
His latest assignment is to head to North Carolina to look at prospect Bo Gentry, a chunky, Babe Ruthstyle hitter (he even wears No. 3) who everyone keeps saying is the next Albert Pujols. And Frank, worried about his pal, has talked Gus’s daughter Mickey (as in Mickey Mantle) to accompany him.
Mickey, played by Amy Adams with tomboy gusto, is a workaholic lawyer striving for a partnership in an all-male firm. Gus raised her — the mother is dead, evoking a graveyard scene in which Eastwood whispers the song Let Me Call You Sweetheart to the tombstone while drinking beer — and despite her corporate slickness, she has all the scout’s skills. She can shoot pool, drink beer, throw a ball and analyze a swing.
Gus and Mickey also share a childhood secret, something that tore them apart and that he has never talked about. We’ve heard that one before, although it’s usually in father-and-son films, and this version comes out of the blue, part of a series of arbitrary third-act revelations. As the memory plays out, Lorenz cuts in shots of a younger Eastwood from his Dirty Harry days, a jolting reminder of how handsome he was, and how much more interesting he looks today.
Meanwhile, father and daughter bond in a boozy way, helped along by the appearance of Johnny “The Flame” Flanagan (Justin Timberlake, quietly engaging), a former pitcher now turned scout for the Boston Red Sox. He’s also in the Carolinas to watch the hot hitting prospect, but it’s Mickey who catches his eye. Johnny is around to redeem Mickey, just as she’s around to redeem Gus: Trouble with the Curve is a pretty predictable film, and never more so than in the cartoonish (and crowd-pleasing) climax.
But Eastwood manages to maintain his decorum throughout, like some veteran pitcher who’s lost the speed off his fastball and relies on a sneaky change-up. He does just a few things, but he does them remarkably well.