George Clooney returns to the director (and actor) seat with Leatherheads, a straightforward homage to the smarmy ’20s culture and to the rise of professional football. Leatherheads stars Clooney as Jimmy “Dodge” Connolly, a guy who leads the Duluth Bulldogs, a rag-tag professional football team trying to make it big in a sport that was the nation’s most popular sport. When Connolly is able to snag leading college player and WWI veteran Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) he has in his hands a chance to take his team to the next level with his star power. At the same time Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) plays a newspaper reporter hot on the case that Rutherford might be hiding something about his service record. That’s literally the plot of Leatherheads. Simple and straightforward, because honestly that’s all it needs to be. The real purpose of Leatherheads is to be just a comedy, something fun to shoot. Taking a look at George Clooney’s previous works- Syriana, Michael Clayton and Good Night and Good Luck, his previously directed movie about Edward R. Murrow and his fight against the Red Scare and McCarthyism- Clooney deserves a comedic break. Something where he can jump in the mud (check), steal police uniforms and try to con suicidal men into jumping out of windows (check), and get in bar fights (check). And with this angle in mind, it is the screen time between Clooney and Zellweger that really makes the movie. They both understand exactly what they came here for, catchy romantic dialogue. And that is what they deliver. Leatherheads is quite a departure from Clooney’s other films and it’s very fun to see him in a different light. It is a good movie if you understand what you’re looking at- a simple and witty comedy.
