by ECI Released : 2024-04-26
Challengers is the latest film from director Luca Guadagnino starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor. The film centers around three professional tennis players and their interpersonal relationships over the course of 13 years.
The entire film is set during a Challenger match final between 6x grand slam champion Art Donaldson (Faist) and underachieving former wunderkind Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor). Faist and Oconnor's characters are former friends and tennis doubles partners with Zweig being the superior player during their time on the junior circuit. The film flashes back between this match and shows the character's relationships and how they got to that point.
The film was one of the best of the year with three stand-out performances. It has drama, great tennis scenes, and some unexpected twists. At times the sound mixing made a really good score drown out the dialogue and the ambiguous ending will assuredly lead to theories and debate but despite these minor gripes its a great film worth watching.
