
Release date: April 26, 2024 (USA)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. Pictures, Amazon MGM Studios
Box office: $7 million
Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Music by: Trent Reznor; Atticus Ross
Honestly I didn’t really pay attention to the trailers. Thought this was a tennis movie until I was informed there’s lots of drama with Zendaya character dating 2 guys. I went in to see what Zendaya is up to outside of Spiderman and freaking loved the entire ride.
Challengers stars Zendaya as Tennis player turned coach – Tashi Duncan. Mike Faist as Art Donaldson & Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig. I thought when people mentioned Zendaya being the main character that there wouldn’t be other main characters but I felt as these 3 equally shared the spot light with one another.
Each of them had fantastic performances which captivated me along the entire story unfolding. This movie has one of my favorite story telling methods where it starts with the ending or a moment in time where the film takes you back to piece together the details required for that moment later on in the film.
Bravo to the director for this movie as I felt like the movie flowed like a tennis match going back and forth introducing characters and information about our 3 leads opening up and unveiling more and more. You may pick your sides and maybe even switch as the scenes revealed more but the entire way your captivated with what’s being displayed on screen.
I don’t want to entire spoiler territory so I’ll go up to a point without crossing. Art & Zweig are the best of friends and Zweig has a infatuation with Tashi. Art was smitten upon first sight of Tashi and from there the competition was on to win her affections over. I use competition as Tashi only speaks of Tennis and refers to all situations around Tennis. Not as she’s a prize to fight over despite that’s kind of what’s going on. She wants the best and that’s the better player the one whom wins at Tennis.
I’ll stop there and wait for your thoughts on this back and forth for after you’ve watched the movie. Now for another component of this movie, the sound track! The sound track was so insanely good! Loved it loved it loved it!
Pacing, story telling and the sound track were my top highlights of this feature. I honestly felt this was a perfect movie. That being said I’m giving it a 9/10 for I have an idea between 9 and 10 to come as a showdown toward the end of the year. That’s when my top 10 list will battle it out with 2 lists. An initial impressions and a rewatched and refined list. I’ll only be giving 9’s until November ish time when the showdown for 2024 top 10 truly begins.
This movie read the assignment and understood it. The bow tie was there and I recommend this title to all looking for a solid flick. Popped to the freshest caliber.