The National Football League draft seems to be a mystery to many, as it is not necessarily a topic many people know much about. On April 11, the Montecito Picture Company released “Draft Day,” a movie giving an insider’s look to the NFL draft starring Kevin Costner, Chadwick Boseman and Jennifer Garner. This movie is sure to capture the attention of any football fanatic as well as anyone who is interested in the behind the scenes action of the NFL draft. Although this is not a true story, this movie is an excellent depiction of what goes into the NFL draft, such as knowing everything you can imagine about the players up for draft, being aware of other team’s potential picks and having thought through what is the best choice for your team, which is a hard job to do when so many fans are depending on you to build the team into something great.

The movie starts off about 12 hours prior to the draft, where viewers see the excitement and tension that is beginning to build up throughout the day. General manager Sonny Weaver Jr. is on a mission to rebuild the Cleveland Browns, which has proved to be a very difficult task for him due to all of the obstacles in his way. Weaver’s father was the previous general manager of the Browns and recently passed away, after having been fired by Weaver. Although the players and staff of the Cleveland Browns do not know the back story of why Weaver had to fire his father, many of them talk badly about Weaver and do not respect his further decisions for the team.

Another one of Weaver’s obstacles was having Tom Michaels, general manger of the Seattle Seahawks, constantly breathing down his neck with a “deal” for the Browns to have star college quarterback Bo Callahan in exchange for the Browns’ first round picks for the next two years, as well as their second pick for the following year. Aside from the draft, Weaver also has a battle with himself over his girlfriend and co-worker, Ali, who recently shared that she is pregnant. And to top it all off, Weaver’s mother is nagging him every opportunity she can about wanting to spread her husband’s ashes on the practice field as respect for Weaver’s father.

I am a huge NFL fan and love to watch football as well as play football, but I did not know much about the NFL draft what so ever before seeing this movie, and I have to say it was very enlightening. I thought it was interesting how much research went into the players aside from the basics, there was a lot of personal tips that the general manager had to be aware of in order to make a straight decision. Besides learning about the NFL draft, I didn’t think that the movie had much of a point or moral to it, which made it kind of boring. And the producers throwing in the romance between Weaver and Ali seemed pointless and off topic to the movie, which I did not care for.

If you are a football fan, I recommend seeing this because, although the movie is fictional, it does a great job of showing viewers what the NFL draft is like and it is really interesting to watch. However, if you don’t like football, the NFL or the NFL draft, this movie is probably not for you. “Draft Day” was a mediocre movie and provided some interesting  information about how the draft works and what a general manager has to do in order to keep his eye on the ball.