Yea yeah, I understand the moral victory. And the guy gets to ball Renee Russo. Still, the guy blew the U.S. open, let's Don Johnson, the enemy, beat him and we're supposed to act like Costner came out on top. BS!
Futhermore, Costner did EXACTLY what Don Jonson said he would do.. Blow up. Right, I'm supposed to feel good because the foil of the story "settled" for second.... That ending is just painful, but also very trite in what it tries to accomplish.
Agree the ending was kinda lame. Would have been better if the golf course exploded and then a gopher came out and danced to some Kenny Loggins tune.
shareWay I see it- it's the success in love that finally matters and the risk-taking golf shot is just the means not the ends.
In the end, Roy never changes how he thinks throughout the film; the character who undergoes the biggest change is actually Molly: there on the final hole she sheds her belief in playing things safe and finally embraces Roy's kamikaze do-or-die ethos and they are thus now soulmates. We just have to accept that he now no longer hates himself -because he has Molly's good opinion- and that in future he will channel his risk-taking into finding a way out of living in a trailer, because really Molly's the big risk-taker here- not Roy, but she doesn't seem like the kinda gal who'll put up with that precarious lifestyle forever, no matter how often she changes career.
Reality is, he wouldn't be remembered by that many- more a media flash-in-the-pan and of note to people who don't really follow golf but like a human-interest story and are then quickly forgotten by the majority, whilst true golf lovers would shake their heads saying he was crazy, which is exactly how Jean Van de Velde is spoken about, and then discuss the actual greats. [It's more likely to be comic failures such as Eddie the Eagle that are long remembered: not a particularly dignified way to be remembered] Roy also finds himself in almost exactly the same financially parlous state at the end of the film as he was when he was complaining about it at the start, and outside of films- lack of money in your 40s is NOT romantic fun. But the one thing that really changes in his life is having the love of a good woman who only finally appreciated him because of her Damascene conversion to his unorthodox approach.
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Love the movie, but hated the ending. Roy was a godamned moron. There's a fine line between courage and foolishness.
What he did in this movie would be the equivalent of an NBA player being down by 1 with a solo fast break and 5 seconds left, and instead of taking the LAYUP for the win, he jacks up a half court three. It isn't gutsy, it's just stupid.
Even Roy's shot is slightly less impressive when you remember it was his 6 straight shot from that spot.
I agree with the original post about the ending...I love this movie, except for the end.
I'm fine with McAvoy going for it on 18 and hitting it into the water. However, I would have written it so that Romeo (Cheech Marin's character) overrules McAvoy when McAvoy wants to try the same shot again. Something like, "Sometimes, in life, we don't always get what we want!" That's the lesson that McAvoy needed to learn...he gave it his best shot and it didn't happen. And that's OK...you live and learn. The ending to the movie just makes McAvoy and Rene Russo's character look like idiots, IMO.