"Challengers" Movie Review

Challengers is a triumphantly sexy cinematic rollercoaster ride, too incredulously fun not to watch. Tashi Duncan is played by Zendaya, the exceptionally emotive young movie star. Matched against her are two gorgeously nerdy-looking young players, Mike Faist as Art Donaldson and Josh O’Conner as Patrick Zweig. All three have the blessing of great chemistry whenever they spar across screen. Alongside their star qualities are bouncing timelines, demonstrating a lifetime of flagrantly competitive choices that create a trail of wasted potential and misguided lust. Director Luca Guadagnino really knows how to make a graceful yet scandalous picture. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's EDM score intensifies the thrill of tennis and prideful characters up to an eleven. After watching Challengers multiple times, I am forced to argue that all sporting events should henceforth take place at a fist-pumping rave. When first hearing about this movie, I thought the entire plot had been offered up within the two-minute trailer. Two friends like a tennis star. Tennis star has a career-ending injury. Tennis star picks blonde boy, and brunette boy is angry. Audience members think they have digested the full ingredients of the film before getting their soles sticky from the theatre floor. Yet, this new-age masterpiece is anything but a simple meal.

Our story begins at its climax. The Challenger is the final match between two former best friends, while the woman who divided them watches from the audience. The film cuts to the past as we formally meet our 18-year-old leading men in the midst of their unknowingly closeted love affair. Art and Patrick learned tennis together as boarding school roommates. The pair appear to have this adolescent twin flame connection as they push their hotel beds together, walk in step, and recall their coming-of-age masturbation story in lovingly rosy-cheeked detail. Entering from the other side of the court is Tashi, the beautiful tennis prodigy. Meeting Tashi grants Art and Patrick a mutual obsession. She explains that when played expertly, tennis is a relationship. A connection where two people become one and transcend to a place adorned with love and true understanding. At that moment, the young men become profoundly attached to Tashi in utterly different ways. Art sees her as a prophet, a light that will save him from insecurity and indecision. Patrick sees her love for the game mirror his own. They both desire to be present in the magic that’s created between two rackets and two bodies. After Tashi transfixes her young players into revealing how deep their bond goes, she pits them against each other. She pretends to embody a neutral tennis ball when announcing that the winner of their next match will win her phone number. Patrick’s victory ignites the flames of the future.

A year after his defeat, Art moves jealously to break up the couple. This forces Tashi and Patrick to argue about what their relationship means to one another immediately before the game that ruins her career. The anger both Tashi and Art have for Patrick eviscerates the friendship between the young men. Years later, Art reconnects with Tashi, and she becomes his coach and wife. In the interim, Tashi and Patrick have a quick affair that shocks and titillates the plot. We see in the present that Tashi has turned cold to Art as he becomes more hopeless in pleasing(winning) her. The trio are forced back into rotation after all these years when Art and Patrick must compete. Patrick wants to win to prove that he has always been talented and deserving of accolades. Art has to win because Tashi plays vicariously through him. These poor misguided souls.

The true pleasure of watching Challengers comes from the icky feeling it gives you. You are “supposed” to be uncomfortable when watching a woman blatantly cheat on the father of her child. We are “morally obligated” to chastise Tashi when she tells herself that she’s only sleeping with Patrick to win Art the final match. We are “demanded” to be disgusted by Patrick when he brazenly admits that he’s on an internet date only to gain a place to sleep. But why, instead, are we laughing and cheering for all three villains?

The villainy of competition is prevalent in all three characters. Patrick is a villain because of his callous attitude. He has to win Tashi’s number over Art because he wants to date a beautiful woman. Not because he sees her as a person per se, but because he desires to be loved in a by-any-means-necessary way. He exhibits this in his attempts to get Tashi to mirror him. Throughout their timeline he repeats, “I miss you,” hoping to get the same in return. She never submits, leaving him to yearning and tantrums. Patrick unceremoniously jabs at Art in the steam room when he covertly suggests that he and Tashi had sex after her engagement. Yet, in the same breath, Patrick is desperate to know if he still matters to Art. A villain who is a glutton for punishment is quite an arduous identity. Art’s villainy is only found upon rewatch. He is a skilled player, but doesn’t have the instincts that Patrick and Tashi possess. He is a little lost and, therefore, desperate to achieve. At the start of the movie, once he loses Tashi’s attention, he becomes consumed by his own failure. He wants the trophy so much that he plants seeds of doubt in both heads, playing on what he thinks each of them will view as dealbreakers in a relationship. Then he steps back and watches the explosion. As much as they would argue that Patrick's refusal to come to Tashi’s match is what caused her injury, Art building these conflicting narratives is what creates the alternate reality that the three of them were never meant to enter. A reality of wasted potential, resentful marriages, misplaced passion, and a game of deceit.

Even so, Queen Tashi might be the ultimate villain. She doesn’t care about people; she just finds the thrill, joy, and hunger in games. At eighteen, she smugly looks upon the two boys she prompted to make out with each other as if she were a skilled puppet master. She stops their lips and then challenges the boys to chase her like a sexy tyrant lording over hungry hearts. Tashi becomes an even greater villain when she decides to reconnect with Art. Four years after her injury, they meet at an Applebee's (one of many product placements that nod to the litany of advertisements in the competitive sporting world), and Tashi tells him, “You never said if you were still in love with me or not.” Art replies the same way he did years prior, “Who wouldn’t be?” Showing the audience that he isn’t as concerned with who she is but what she represents. Tashi knows this but is more centered by the fact he will always be president of her fan club. This distinction ultimately separates the identity of Art from Patrick. Tashi leaps further into her villainy as she cheats on Art. It could be because of her anger that Art is becoming the tennis star she was meant to be. Or it could be because Patrick has always been more passionate than Art. It could be because cheating makes the game of life more intense, betting there will be more to lose. Tashi has always been the competitor, while Art is fixed as her pawn, never her partner.

This movie is about choice, lust, and skill. In this intricate web, we are left shocked by the pride beating within the human condition. Can I see myself in these characters? How can we be so cruel to one another? How did the trio embody sin and unsportsmanlike conduct in the most cinematically sexy way? I thought this movie was well-made and complex, but it is also plain fun. You feel the tension in your chest as if the characters are playing for your own fate. From beginning to end, they never do what moral decency demands of them. Smirking with sweaty greed at every smack of their rackets. From the character study to the fluctuating timeline, the bisexual undertones to the quick-tempered dialogue, it was truly a joy to watch. This story was not told but hit across the screen. You know a movie is good when you have no idea what will happen next. Your eyes are so present with the action. Your body twitches with laughter. Your mouth is left aghast. By the end, you are left exhausted by everything witnessed. To me, Challengers is a comedy, romance, drama, and thriller. All the best genres of filmmaking swirled into three gorgeous actors, two hours, and one competitive sport. It is the film of 2024.

Come on!