Sports movies have a bad reputation. There is a widely held belief that they are generally not up to much, owing to the difficulty of filming actual sport, particularly with the non-fiction unpredictable element of a sporting contest. That, however, is nonsense. Boxing gave birth to cinema in the 1890s, and the sport has remained a mainstay on the big screen ever since.
Sports like boxing, American football, and plain old football have been used as metaphors for the human condition by directors like Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Stanley Kubrick, tackling themes like class, guilt, and masculinity. Masculinity, in particular, is a popular theme for a sports film to explore.
The training montage to pop music, an underdog story, and using sport to find emotional happiness are all clichés in the sports film, but the best, like the sport itself, subvert expectations and hit you with something deeper.
Best iconic sports movies:
1. Jerry Maguire:
Year of release: 1996
Director: Cameron Crowe
IMDB rating: 7.3/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 2h 19m
Show me the money! You complete me! You had me at hello! A quote-fest about a sleazy sports agent who is softened by Renee Zellweger’s charms and has a life-changing epiphany about what he wants his life to be. Cruise is perfectly cast in one of his few romantic roles, and the film is a scathingly accurate depiction of the ruthless world of sports agenting, aside from its charm and cuddly love story.
2. Air:
Year of release: 2023
Director: Ben Affleck
IMDB rating: 7.4/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 1h 52m
Trust Ben Affleck to extract cinematic value from a brand-expanding shoe collaboration like the Nike-Jordan collaboration. Air is a modern Jerry Maguire, propelled by dual performances from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the screenwriting partners reuniting in front of the camera for the second time (the first was in Ridley Scott’s 2021 historical drama The Last Duel). Mr. Jack King
3. Any Given Sunday:
Year of release: 1999
Director: Oliver Stone
IMDB rating: 6.9/10
OTT platform: YouTube
Runtime: 2h 42m
Oliver Stone compares American football to gladiators hacking at each other in the Coliseum. And he’s not entirely incorrect. Any Given Sunday is epic, loud, sweaty, sweary, and everything in between, as Stone cranks everything up to 11 for this three-hour film.
A never-shoutier Al Pacino, a young Jamie Foxx, an impossibly smarmy James Woods, a defiant Cameron Diaz, and several NFL legends such as Jim Brown, Lawrence Taylor, and the immaculately named Dick Butkus round out the cast.
4. Escape to Victory:
Year of release: 1981
Director: John Huston
IMDB rating: 6.6/10
OTT platform: YouTube
Runtime: 1h 56m
We all knew Stallone had good hands from Rocky, but did anyone ever think of him as goalkeeper extraordinaire? When he’s rolling around a football field, he looks about as at ease as Bambi on ice, so it’s a good thing the film also enlisted Pele, Bobby Moore, and Ossie Ardiles to handle the majority of the football action. As the leader of the Allies, Michael Caine is at his most charismatic.
5. The Fighter:
Year of release: 2010
Director: David O. Russell
IMDB rating: 7.8/10
OTT platform: Netflix
Runtime: 1h 56m
Conventional? Sure. Effective? Absolutely. This Micky Ward biopic is built on the shoulders of its grand performances, shot with a jagged realism by David O Russell and brushed over with a flash of 90s grit. As Ward, Wahlberg is all bruising and babyfaced, while Christian Bale is gaunt as his crack-addict brother.
Amy Adams and Melissa Leo provide female support, with three of the four receiving Oscar nominations. Wahlberg has every right to be disappointed that he did not make the shortlist. Boxing fans in the audience will enjoy the small details like the classic HBO idents and the sweaty claustrophobia of smaller theatre halls.
6. He Got Game:
Year of release: 1998
Director: Spike Lee
IMDB rating: 6.9/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 2h 16m
Spike Lee is a die-hard New York Knicks fan, but He Got Game is his only basketball film, starring real-life basketball star Ray Allen and actual actor Denzel Washington. Denzel’s most underappreciated performance.
7. Ali:
Year of release: 2001
Director: Michael Mann
IMDB rating: 6.7/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 2h 37m
Will Smith has had some absolute bombs, so it’s easy to forget that when he hits, he usually hits gold. Take, for example, Ali, a 2002 biopic of Muhammad Ali directed by Heat’s Michael Mann, with Smith showboating his way through line reads as the eponymous sporting icon.
When playing a real-life subject, there is no formula to follow; some go out of their way to subvert the public persona, while others just gloriously ham it up. Smith certainly goes for the latter, nailing the distinctive cadence — and slightly Southern accent — of Ali’s voice, who spoke as if a bee had stung the inside of his cheek, unrelated to his famous boast. A truly popcorn-worthy performance.
8. Fat City:
Year of release: 1972
Director: John Huston
IMDB rating: 7.3/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 1h 37m
The ideal boxing film. Over-the-hill journeymen, sham promoters, and prospects with no prospects. This is the gut-wrenching reality of being a fighter outside of the spotlight. This is John Huston at his best, devastatingly unsentimental. Fat City, starring Nick Nolte and a young Jeff Bridges, is the best movie you’ve ever seen.
9. Rush:
Year of release: 2013
Director: Ron Howard
IMDB rating: 8.1/10
OTT platform: Netflix
Runtime: 2h 3m
Despite appearing to be a natural fit for the big screen (cars go brum brum really fast, what’s not to like? ), there have been few motor racing films, and even fewer Formula 1 films. The best of them is Ron Howard’s Rush, which follows the 1970s feud between racers James Hunt and Nikki Lauda.
There are some thrilling racing sequences, an all-time Hans Zimmer score, and a Chris Hemsworth performance that makes you wish he hadn’t been stuck as Thor for over a decade.
10. Warrior:
Year of release: 2011
Director: Gavin O’Connor
IMDB rating: 8.1/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 2h 20m
Warrior, the only good film set in the world of MMA, leans heavily on the Rocky template with a dash of Greek myth in this tale of separated brothers who happen to enter the same cage-fighting tournament. The fighting, while much cleaner than real MMA, is thrilling, violent, and a not-so-subtle metaphor for the characters’ personalities, starring a ferocious Tom Hardy at his most Brando-inspired, and Joel Edgerton as the brothers.
11. Creed:
Year of release: 2015
Director: Ryan Coogler
IMDB rating: 7.6/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 2h 13m
However, you could argue that Creed is superior to Rocky. The long-dead franchise was resurrected by Ryan Coogler, who, with the help of a massive lead performance from Michael B Jordan, brought Rocky into the twenty-first century with this epic drama about class, race, and identity. It’s good old-fashioned filmmaking at its finest. Putting Stallone in the role of trainer was a brilliant move, and the old warhorse delivered a career-best performance.
12. Million Dollar Baby:
Year of release: 2004
Director: Clint Eastwood
IMDB rating: 8.1/10
OTT platform: Amazon Prime Video
Runtime: 2h 12m
It lacks a subtle bone on its body, but who needs a feather when a sledgehammer will suffice? Clint Eastwood plays a trainer who takes on a wannabe female boxer as his protege, a relationship that ends tragically. Fun fact: It’s the only film in which Clint Eastwood has ever cried (which gives you an idea of how heavy things get).
So, this was all about the best Sports movies available on OTT. Also read, All about newly married Navdeep Saini’s wife Swathi Asthana
