Robert Redford’s ambitious sports drama The Legend of Bagger Vance stars industry prominent actors like Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron. However, the 2000 movie was far from leaving a mark among fans.
Written by Jeremy Leven, the movie is based on Steven Pressfield’s 1995 novel of the same name. The plot of the movie was based on the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita but despite the gravity of the story and the astounding cast, the movie lost the box office battle.
Will Smith On Playing Bagger Vance
Will Smith has a decorated career as an actor and he has been a pretty big name in Hollywood for decades. When he ran into Steven Spielberg at a party, he asked the director why he never had a call for him to be in the director’s movie. Spielberg said “You’re too big for my movies,” and Smith felt that too, and decided to be in The Legend of Bagger Vance.
“I thought ‘Bagger Vance’ was a great opportunity for me to just turn it off. This is the first time in my career that I completely surrendered all my instincts and my natural desire to bend scenes into the Will Smith thing. I just completely gave myself as a tool to Robert Redford to create the film he wanted to create,” Smith once said (via The Morning Call).
Smith plays Bagger Vance and the character is never like anyone he ever played. “It was a really scary place to be in,” Smith added, still, Smith attempted to walk the road but somewhere down the line it felt short.
Matt Damon’s Hardship Didn’t Pan Out
For Matt Damon too, The Legend of Bagger Vance was one of the hardest movies he had ever been in. The Martian actor was forced to learn to play Golf, spending up to eight hours a day learning the game before the production. “It hurt everytime I swung the club,” Damon said (via Morning Call) who even cracked his rib once while overswinging at a ball. “We had this chiropractor, Tony, come on the set. The cameras would roll, I’d swing, and Tony would come running over to pop my rib back in place,” he added.
Of course, by the look of it, the movie doesn’t exclusively follow the narrative of a sports drama, it was rather mystic in nature as it was inspired by the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita. As for Robert Redford, the director has previously made acclaimed movies like Ordinary People, and A River Runs Through It, and this time he had the same passion. However, made $80 million, and the movie faced a huge loss of $40 million. The critical response to the movie was also mediocre scoring only 43% at Rotten Tomatoes.
