Challengers (2024)

What style. From the first scene -- before we know anything about anyone -- we are mesmerized by these two men knocking that ball back and forth while there's clearly something deeper going on. Then the music kicks in and one woman's head falls out of sync with the rest of the crowd as she stops watching the ball and focuses instead on a player. Just wow. This director knows how to hook an audience.

Jumbled timelines are hit or miss for me. Sometimes they just feel like a gimmick, but times like this it feels integral to the art of storytelling. I loved seeing, little by little, how they got to where they are. I also was into that "in my bones" knowledge that this is a bona fide throuple: complete together while unable to thrive singly or even coupled.

And then there's that last scene, we're back to the match that started it all. Only this time, we don't pull back to a wide shot, we enter the action from the perspective of the ball. And we see this trio finally sync up again. Brilliant.

A-