The thing that really popped for me in "Challengers" was the sound. If you’ve ever been privileged to have seen a top-notch professional tennis match in person (television has never done the sport justice), you’ll know that there’s a very particular “blam” when one of the world’s best players serves a tennis ball … let’s say 160 miles per hour. And in the opening minutes of "Challengers" as Josh O’Connor (you’ll remember him as Charles from "The Crown"), crushes his serve and that “blam” explodes off the racket, I literally jumped in my seat. “That’s it,” I thought. Indeed, I had never heard that perfect sound of a perfect serve in a perfect tennis match, at least never before on television or in film.
"Challengers" is aces all around, beginning and ending with producer/star Zendaya. She’s having a pretty fabulous year already, co-starring in "Dune Part Two," that rare sequel nearly as good as part one. In "Challengers," she’s Tashi Duncan, a tennis phenom whose ferocity in sport matches her physicality, self-confidence, and inner power. Zendaya’s on-court movement is phenomenal; and while she reportedly trained for months, director Luca Guadagnino told Variety that, as he began to edit the film, he used extraordinarily little of Zendaya’s double. Equally, her off-court performance is also heart-racing. It would have been very easy to make Tashi a one-sided character, simply a woman of strong will. But Zendaya does the opposite — she brings a sense of control and power, while at the same time revealing the most subtle moments of fragility just below the epidermis of the very-public strength of a world-class athlete.
In the film, when her contemporaries Patrick Zweig (O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist from the recent "West Side Story" remake) see Tashi in action early in her career, the two best friends are entranced — and though Patrick and Art have known each other since they were pre-teen roommates at a tennis academy, competition kicks in. Tashi, savvier than Art and Patrick (though all three are just 18 years old at the time), is aware of everything … even things Art and Patrick don’t see, or don’t want to see. Thus begins a journey that takes Tashi, Art and Patrick to places none of them expected to go, as "Challengers" bounces through a dynamic, interweaving storyline that travels back and forth in these characters’ lives, and ultimately framed by a revelatory “challengers” match between Art and Patrick that takes place 13 years since they first met Tashi — after an injury changed Tashi’s trajectory, after Art and Tashi married and had a daughter, and after Patrick makes Tashi and Art reconsider everything. And through a narrative that volleys between the early aughts and 2019, we see the paths they took, the games they played, and the passions they followed. But it’s Tashi’s power, emotionally and romantically, that both pivots and anchors the connection they all have. And as their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself, “What will it cost to win?”
Full disclosure: I’m a huuuuuge tennis fan. Heaven help you if you ever ask me about tennis — I’ll go all day. Not to brag, but I’ve attended Wimbledon seven times. And yes, I’m that kind of tennis nerd who actually watches the Tennis Channel’s coverage of … well, just about anything. I guess there’s no way around it. I’m a bit of a tennis snob. So, truth be told, my expectations for "Challengers" wasn’t too high. You see, in my opinion, Hollywood has never produced a decent tennis movie. In fact, some of the worst sports films of all time were tennis movies — 1970’s "Players" with Ali McGraw and Dean Paul Martin (yup, Dino’s son) and 2017’s "Borg vs McEnroe," with Shia LaBeouf as you know who, are nails-on-a-blackboard excruciating to watch. But "Challengers" gets it right. It gets a lot right. In fact, it’s pretty great.
Now, about that sex. My guess is that if you were to do a Google search of “Challengers” and “Zendaya,” you’ll soon find yourself eyeball-deep in a flurry of online reviews, which will undoubtedly use the words “sex,” “sexy,” “sexuality” … well, you get it. So, yes and yes. For the record, "Challengers" is wonderfully sexy. And for all the right reasons. The trio use or misuse sex throughout their young lives and the consequences are significant. And to that end, "Challengers" is as much about sex as it is about tennis. In fact, about a day after I first screened "Challengers," it hit me: the tennis in this particular film is a metaphor for power, and the power dynamics amongst people who lean on each other, maybe a little bit too much. And when sex is a fulcrum of that power, well, it can be love, set, and match. Or a disaster. Kudos to everyone on this one, particularly Ms. Zendaya. Wow. I never would have guessed.
