Saturday Night at the Movies: Game, Set, Match

The Greatest Tennis Movie Ever - And More Google Misinformation!

Are you aware of the terrible misinformation that the world’s most powerful search engine has been spreading? I refer not to Google’s inability to tell the difference between men and women, but to something even more perverse: its tennis movie listings!

With the US Open concluding this weekend, what will the people of America do come Monday to scratch their thrilling-late-night-tennis itch? Well, if they make the mistake of asking Google, the world’s most influential repository of answers to random internet questions, they will be grievously misled. Here is the list I get when I query Google about the best tennis movies out there:

To borrow a phrase from the top row, far left: you have got to be kidding me.

Nor is Google alone in their embarrassing cinematic tennis ignorance. You’d think at least the AARP, given their constituency, would have heard that movies were being made even before the 21st century… but no.

So, without further ado, as a public service to you all, I present to you what is - even if your search engine has never heard of it - unquestionably the greatest tennis movie of all time.

If there is any fault with Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, it is that of being a victim of its own success. It seems that every long-running crime/mystery show, from CSI to Law & Order to Castle, has at some point paid homage to the famous plot. You know the drill: two murders, seemingly unconnected, no apparent motive for the key suspects, nothing makes sense… until the detectives realize that the two killers got together, watched Hitchcock’s classic, and were inspired to ‘swap’ murders.

Please believe me when I tell you that this movie is no CSI episode and, despite its pop culture familiarity, is very much worth your time. The classic murder switch plot is but the opening set-up of the movie, and if you haven’t seen it, where Hitchcock and crew take the rest of the story is bound to captivate and surprise you.

I will not spoil it, so all I will say is that he’s celebrated as the master of suspense for a reason. The acting, too, is just perfect. Robert Walker stars in one of my all-time favorite lesser-known movies, a beautiful and sweet romance called The Clock - the fantastic Rick McGinnis wrote a great essay about it this summer at Mark Steyn’s site. In that movie, and in many of his others, Walker inhabits an innocently charming boy-next-door type of persona. In Strangers, you sense enough of that charm and friendliness to see how a man like him can escape suspicion, but then a closer look reveals something truly… unsettling. It is an unforgettable performance. Sadly, Walker died while the movie was still in theaters - here is a moving reminiscence from Steyn himself.

As for the tennis, well, whether you like the sport or not, you will be glued to your seat for the most intense tennis match you’ll ever see. The game is not incidental to the movie but a key part of the plot. If you are a tennis fan, the next time you watch one of your favorite players and he is playing uncharacteristically poorly, well, you’ll have to wonder if he’s being distracted by an unfolding murder plot …

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the US Open finals this weekend and tonight’s movie choice, too!