We went and saw The Long Game today. It's an adaptation of a true story about the golf team from San Felipe High School in Del Rio, Texas, set in the 1950s. I'll keep spoilers out of it, but they're a group of Mexican-American boys who all caddied at an upscale private country club in their community. They aspired to play golf themselves but weren't allowed on the course except to caddie, so they built their own crude practice course in the middle of the South Texas desert. They're brought together as a golf team under their coach (JB Peña), who has just taken a job as an Assistant Superintendent at the high school and is an avid golfer. He also aspires to membership at the (all-white) country club where the boys work, but is denied because of his ethnicity.
They face a lot of obstacles and discrimination in the golf world and the community as a whole as they strive for legitimacy and acceptance, and deal with their own individual struggles in handling and overcoming it. Cheech Marin plays "Pollo", a longtime employee of the country club who shares his (often humorous) outlook and serves as kind of a mentor to both the youths and Peña. They're also helped by Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quaid), a former PGA Tour player who is a member at the country club but sees potential in the youths, so he takes on the role of teaching them the game and uses his influence as a country club member to get them into golf tournaments.
It's a great story with some unforeseen twists and turns, a good mix of humor and drama, and some very touching moments. It's a golf movie, but one that non-golfers can enjoy equally (my non-golfing wife was actually the one who found it and wanted to go see it, and she enjoyed it a lot). If you're looking for a movie to go see, it's worth your time.
They face a lot of obstacles and discrimination in the golf world and the community as a whole as they strive for legitimacy and acceptance, and deal with their own individual struggles in handling and overcoming it. Cheech Marin plays "Pollo", a longtime employee of the country club who shares his (often humorous) outlook and serves as kind of a mentor to both the youths and Peña. They're also helped by Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quaid), a former PGA Tour player who is a member at the country club but sees potential in the youths, so he takes on the role of teaching them the game and uses his influence as a country club member to get them into golf tournaments.
It's a great story with some unforeseen twists and turns, a good mix of humor and drama, and some very touching moments. It's a golf movie, but one that non-golfers can enjoy equally (my non-golfing wife was actually the one who found it and wanted to go see it, and she enjoyed it a lot). If you're looking for a movie to go see, it's worth your time.
