Challengers

 

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Challengers follows Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig, two up-and-coming tennis players who both fall for Tashi Duncan, a player who is on the track to being a tennis sensation. While Tashi is motivated to compete and exceed at tennis by any means, both Art and Patrick are lovestruck and want Tashi's affection by any means.

 

This film tells you all the time that it is about tennis, but it never reduces tennis to a mere sport. What the film really wants to present you with is the idea of tennis; a duel and a partnership simultaneously. At all moments of this film, we cut back and forth to the Challenger game Patrick and Art are both playing late in their lives; the final climactic match we get to watch as an audience. This match at first feels like a game; but as we watch it evolves to a struggle to survive, a fierce rivalry, but also an intimate relationship that has a lot of fire left in it. The person in this film who understands the complexities of tennis and wants to witness a match like this is Tashi, on some level she fully understands this deeper meaning and strives for it in everything. This is why she becomes so disinterested in Patrick when he loses focus or starts falling out of love with Art when he loses his drive to compete. In a nice contrast, Art and Patrick are playing the game of tennis over years of their lives. They want to compete for Tashi in a competitive teenage way, taking things as a light competition between friends. Yet as Tashi comes to be something they both yearn for more and more, their friendship begins to fracture, and they come apart in a bitter way. Trading blows back and forth for years as they seek their moment with her, doing anything to be worthy of this woman they both love. Tashi also recognises this friendship as something that holds a very intimate bond. There is an element of repressed homoeroticism in Art and Patrick and how they feel for one another. It's actually very beautiful to see such a great friendship touch on becoming something more, shattering and then finding its own way to reunion. Challengers is the literary and visual metaphor done perfect, and it's going to stand as one of the best scripts of 2024.

 

The visuals in this get pretty wild and experimental at times, but that results in something that is visually quite thrilling, especially when watching the active matches. I also thought the hyper-close way this film shows passion, yearning and intimacy makes it one of the more visually attractive films of the year. The editing is conducted at an incredible pace, moving scenes from something steady to something electric with impeccable timing. The score crafted by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is this thrilling synth work that feels like adrenaline and desire made music.

 

Zendaya, who played Tashi Duncan, is a real calculating force of ambition in this one; I would probably say that this could be one of Zendaya's greatest roles to date. Mike Faist, who played Art Donaldson, portrays yearning and hunger for something very well; I also enjoyed seeing present day Faist at this low point of wanting to quit but not wanting to lose.

 

However, the best performance came from Josh O'Connor, who played Patrick Zweig. This role feels like a desperate individual when first we meet him, a bit of an underdog and someone who really needs a win. Which is true in some ways, but Zweig is a little more complicated and slippery than that. This is a role brimming with charisma, he knows how to talk the talk and feels so entirely sure of himself. O'Connor thrives with Zweig, presenting this cocky player who seems convinced every door before him will just open. He has such brilliant chemistry with Faist, their friendship is one of the most interesting aspects of this whole thing. I like how he presents boyish annoyance for his initial moments of conflict, but in his later scenes his anger comes across as more sudden or unexpected. O'Connor also just happened to be charming and seductive in this, he made Zweig this figure who really is quite attractive in the context of the story and to the viewer. It's a titan role in a film where all three leads absolutely dominate.

 

Challengers doesn't step poorly too often, but I felt some of the later act work to make a convincing cheating sub-plot really didn't land as nicely as was intended. It all just felt a bit more fantastical than everything else up until that point.

 

I also wasn't a fan of the intrusive text boxes to make everything look like a tennis match, it was a clunky and basic moment of post-production. The experimental, fast-paced camera work in the third act resulted in some point of view shots that just did not work and intruded on the flow of a scene here and there.

This film has one of the most electric and fascinating scripts of the year, writing this good is such a treasure. I would give Challengers an 8.5/10.