The 10 best sports movies ever made
Through years of repetition, the formula of the sports movie – much like any genre that’s been proven consistently popular over such a long period of time – has found itself in real danger of becoming homogenised.
Whether it’s a fictional story or real-life events ripped right from the headlines, there’s going to be a complicated protagonist at the centre of the narrative, one who either rises from the bottom to the top or finds themselves heading in the opposite direction, with the opportunity for redemption and hurdles of adversity along the way.
Of course, not every sports drama is obligated to hit that exact beat, but it’s something many of them tend to do. As a result, the best examples tend to be the ones that march to the beat of their own drum, even when dealing with a person who lived through the experiences first-hand.
Fittingly for a medium that has its own set of tropes and trappings, the best cinematic sports stories embrace and subvert them in equal measure. Whether it’s drama, comedy, documentary, boxing, basketball, baseball, or creative licence of inarguable facts, the following ten films have all gone down in history in their own way.
The 10 best sports movies ever made:
10. Slap Shot (George Roy Hill, 1977)
Some movies eventually transcend cult classic status to become certifiable classics in the traditional sense, something that definitely applies to Paul Newman‘s Slap Shot after it was inexplicably greeted with an initial reaction that wasn’t quite as cold as the ice on which it unfolds but was hardly piping hot regardless.
Taking an A-list Hollywood superstar and parachuting them into gritty, grizzled surroundings, Newman’s Reggie Dunlop weaponizes violence to turn minor league team the Charlestown Chiefs into a phenomenon that uses the perceived shortcomings of the outfit and players to its advantage in riotous, profane, and delightfully anarchic fashion.
Zeroing in on the blood and thunder appeal of sports at their basest form and how important that primal connection can be to the fanbase, Slap Shot also manages to sneak in some typically 1970s-era shots at corporate culture along the way, with Kathryn Walker’s Anita McCambridge utterly unconcerned by the surging popularity when there’s tax benefits to be reaped.
9. Murderball (Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, 2005)
While Murderball is incredibly uplifting and inspirational, a huge part of what makes it unforgettable is the way in which directors Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro tell that story in a way that isn’t often associated with the sports documentary.
Many of them have veered into saccharine sentimentality, profound soundbites, and the dedication and commitment required to compete at the Paralympics, but the subjects themselves aren’t ones for skirting around their circumstances. Instead, these guys are warriors ready to risk it all in the purest sense of the word.
The narrative thrust comes from the intense rivalry between the United States and Canada, with both sets of players just as happy to party hard as they are to leave it all on the court. The grit and determination is palpable, but neither Murderball nor its on-camera participants are interested in taking the ‘Hollywood’ route to telling their story. Instead, as life-affirming as it often is, this is an intense, simmering, violent, and often bloody battle for supremacy.
8. Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)
Kevin Costner has played more than a few mentor figures during his time in the spotlight, but none have proven to be as affecting or memorable as the role of Crash Davis, who sets aside his increasingly bleak worldview to take Tim Robbins Calvin ‘Nuke’ Laloosh under his wing.
Davis has grown world-weary to the point where his love of baseball is barely a flickering ember, but the veteran catcher with a career rooted in the minor leagues gets a new lease of professional life when he begins showing the ropes to Laloosh, described as having “a million-dollar arm and a ten-cent head.”
Although there’s romance to be found along the way with Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy, Bull Durham is surprisingly philosophical in its thematic undertones. The battles between youth and experience, passion and professionalism, and the futility of chasing a dream that never comes are all present and accounted for, along with the reckoning that comes with realising that even though your own dreams and expectations haven’t materialised, paying it forward to the next generation can be just as fulfilling.
7. The Bad News Bears (Michael Ritchie, 1976)
Despite giving rise to two sequels, a short-lived TV series, and a remake, The Bad News Bears perfected its approach to the classic underdog story the first time around, with Walter Matthau’s beer-guzzling curmudgeon coaching a kids’ baseball team despite his thinly-veiled disdain for both.
It hits virtually every single one of the beats expected from the sports comedy without fail, but it’s the way in which it hits them that makes it so special. Sure, the team overcomes adversity to become winners while learning life lessons along the way, but that doesn’t sand down the motley crew’s rough-hewn edges.
Taking aim at the ultra-competitive – often to an unnecessary extent – nature of American youth sports and shining a light on the associated pressures, The Bad News Bears might deal heavily in cliché and formula, but it does so with a subversive grin etched across its face and a mischievous streak the genre has rarely bettered.
6. Senna (Asif Kapadia, 2010)
Three-time world champion and the film‘s subject Ayrton Senna was the face and poster boy of Formula One in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before his mythology was secured in the most tragic of circumstances when an accident during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix resulted in his death at the age of just 34.
Retrospective documentaries on elite-tier sportspeople who lost their lives too soon can often descend into hagiography, but for as charming, charismatic, and driven as Senna evidently was, Asif Kapadia’s film layers the life story of a devoutly religious, intensely competitive, and borderline inscrutable figure who was equally as enigmatic as he was telegenic to mesmerising effect, one who wasn’t afraid to take on the top brass in regards to Formula One’s shortcomings and failings either.
The heated rivalry with former teammate Alain Prost provides an erstwhile antagonist in Senna’s story to add further complexities to his unerring desire to be the best in the world at his chosen profession regardless of the personal sacrifices required in order to achieve it, while the racing footage remains thrilling to the point of timelessness.
5. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
The bright lights and packed houses of a multi-billion dollar operation like WWE are only a small part of the professional wrestling industry as a whole, something that’s never been made clearer on-screen than in Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler.
A comeback story that was doomed from the beginning, Mickey Rourke’s Oscar-nominated performance finds Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson unable – or unwilling – to let go of his glory days, even though he’s been reduced to working menial jobs by day for the sake of putting his body through hell for an increasingly small crowd by night.
The difference between the subdued man and the peacocking character are stark, with his wrestling career occupying the oxymoronic position of being the only thing he lives for, and yet the entire reason his life is in the crumbling state it finds itself. Melancholic right up until the final frame, it’s entirely up to the viewer as to whether or not the final shot ended up with him coming down from the top rope in one piece.
4. Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981)
Winner of four Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Original Score’, Chariots of Fire‘s power as a stirring work of cinema has remained unaffected by its iconic score and slow-motion running scenes being absorbed into the fabric of pop culture and parodied mercilessly along the way.
A relatively simple story of adversity and prejudices being overcome through the means of being better than anyone else regardless of who they are or where they’re from the true-life inspiration adds further authenticity to the impeccably-acted and expertly-shot sports drama.
Intertwining the fates of Ben Cross’ Harold Abrahams and Ian Charleston’s Eric Liddell against the backdrop of the 1924 Olympics and the socio-political circumstances of the time relevant to their own backgrounds remains as powerful and elegiacally inspiring as ever, and it’s impossible not to be rooting for them regardless of knowing full well how it turns out in the end.
3. Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)
Sylvester Stallone launched his entire career with cinema’s greatest-ever fictional underdog story, and the first Rocky stands tall in stark contrast to the bombastic blockbuster franchise it became over the course of its many sequels, spinoffs, and sequels to the spinoffs.
Rocky Balboa spent his life chasing a dream he never realistically stood a chance of accomplishing, at least until an overconfident opponent quite literally kitted out in the stars-and-stripes gifts him the opportunity of a lifetime with cocky nonchalance. It wasn’t just wish-fulfilment for the title hero, it was the audience living vicariously through a working-class schmuck who went toe-to-toe with the embodiment American Dream and almost emerged victorious.
Although it follows a predictable narrative and character-driven path until the very end, when Rocky loses the climactic fight, he’s still the runaway moral victor by a landslide. Browbeaten by his status in society and clinging onto his pugilistic ambitions by the fingernails, there aren’t many movies to create such a euphoric ‘fists in the air’ feeling as watching Rocky seize the opportunity of a lifetime.
2. Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
Originally intended to be a 30-minute short film, Steve James’ Hoop Dreams ultimately required five years of shooting, 250 hours of footage to be combed through, and a three-year editing process before being lauded as one of the finest documentaries in history.
Following the travails of William Gates and Arthur Agee as they strive to achieve their lifelong dreams of making it to the NBA, Hoop Dreams paints an intoxicating portrait of two immensely talented and relentlessly driven individuals who refuse to entertain the notion of failure.
Backed by the support of their families and facing up to the societal pressures, physical obstacles, and social inequalities that stand in their way, Hoop Dreams is just as much a portrait of the difficulties faced by anyone dreaming big in a failing and broken system as it is a story of two teens eying the big time, complete with unbearable tension via the single most excruciating free throw that’s ever been awarded.
1. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Martin Scorsese isn’t even a particularly big fan of boxing and its many intricacies, which, if anything, helps explain why Raging Bull constructed its in-ring sequences with such visual panache and experimental flair, an approach that a keen follower of the sport likely wouldn’t have even considered.
A biographical drama it may be, but Robert DeNiro’s raw and uncompromising portrayal of Jake LaMotta is more in tune with the filmmaker’s psychological deep dives and ruminations on the nature of masculinity than it is interested in the retelling of a life story, with the boxing secondary to the protagonist’s repeated rises and falls.
Raging Bull is a movie about boxing at its core, but the pugilism plays a distant second fiddle to the engrossing character study that underpins everything that unfolds on-screen, with De Niro on career-best form as LaMotta. That being said, as stylised as the fights may be, they’re so disorientating, punishing, and thunderous that they’re every bit as immersive as stepping through the ropes.
