Challengers - Review

Rating: 2 out of 5

IT MAY boast a great cast, slick direction and a terrific soundtrack but Luca Guadignino's tennis love triangle Challengers ultimately hits more faults than winners.

Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist and Zendaya are the headline stars - the former a pair of teenage best friends, named Patrick and Art, who first meet as promising newcomers on the tennis circuit. Their closeness is swiftly put to the test, however, by the arrival of another rising tennis star, in the form of Tashi (Zendaya), who ignites a passion within both men that threatens to spill over into rivalry - never more so than when Tashi promises her phone number to whichever one wins their latest final.

The ensuing film splits between various key moments in the ensuing years, as the dynamic of each relationship changes, and the players' fortunes fluctuate. For Art, there's superstardom and Grand Slam success, for Patrick there's perpetual self-sabotage and disappointment, and for Tashi there's career-ending injury, followed by marriage to Art and management.

But it's clear that the early days of the trio's relationship has shaped what follows, culminating in a grudge match, of sorts, in which Art and Patrick square off against each other in a Challenger final that will ultimately decide the futures of all three.

Working from a script by Justin Kuritzkes, Guadignino's film is certainly alive with romantic possibility given the various motivations and desires of each of the characters, while also offering an intriguing insight into the professional tennis circuit.

And it's also fuelled by a pumped up soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose techno-club score enlivens the background whenever it's rolled out.

But the film stands or falls on whether you actually like the characters and, sadly, none of the trio offer much in the way to empathise with or root for. All three are ruthless, egotistical, self-serving individuals, with each as likely to [literally and figuratively] f**k each other over at the easiest opportunity. There's no sense of loyalty.

Yet perhaps worse, there's a sense of entitlement - either born out of wealthy backgrounds or the ease with which they find playing the game.

Kuritzkes' screenplay offers crumbs of good ideas, worth exploring in greater depth - Zendaya's colour, for instance, is referenced once [by her own self], but Challengers isn't interested in exploring racial or sexual politics on any serious level. Likewise, the psychology of the characters - Patrick could have been a poster boy for finding success against the odds, while Tashi's injury could have allowed room for more insight into the dangers of high-profile sports and the toll it takes on the mind and body. But while alluded to, Guadignino isn't interested in following through.

Rather, he's more interested in keeping things as playful as they are spiteful. It's more about the sexual energy between the trio than anything else - everything boiling down to who gets the girl, or whether a bro-mance can be re-established. And so, we watch scene after scene unravel involving flirting and betrayal (one or two of which do, admittedly, sparkle with wit and eroticism).

The tennis matches themselves are also curiously flat - artfully directed on occasion (there's a lot of dripping sweat and slow-mo exertion), yet also experimental and distracting at others (an attempt to position the camera as the ball is disorientating and unnecessary). Yet while the stakes are supposedly high, especially during the match that runs throughout the film's running time, the execution never seems urgent enough... something that Reznor and Ross almost seem to be over-compensating for in the delivery of the score.

Given the talent involved, Challengers should have been an exhilarating blend of sports drama and love triangle, capable of pulling you emotionally all over the court/cinema. Instead, it's a self-indulgent, overly arty and somewhat vacuous disappointment of a film, incapable of serving up a single likeable character.