Sports biopics and biopics in general are some of my favorite kinds of films I like to watch. There is just an inspirational feel to sports films. Especially true stories such as Nyad. I also love films about stories I wasn’t familiar with in the past. These make for better movies. Learning about new stories is good for everybody. This one wasn’t the best sports biopic I’ve seen but it was very inspiring and as Diana Nyad’s book is titled “Don’t Give Up” is a great motto.

Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) is a world-renowned marathon swimmer. She has swam the English Channel and various other dangerous bodies of water.  One such feat she has not achieved has been the bugaboo in her long and storied career and that is the swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys which takes sixty hours. She tried it once when she was a much younger woman. As she crosses over into senior citizenship she has found the itch to try this once again. With the help of her close friend Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) and a crotchety boatsman John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans) at her side.

This film uses multiple ways to tell its story. Besides the straightforward narrative, it also uses Archival footage of the woman’s past, newsreel footage, and video footage from friends and colleagues. The other is flashbacks of when she was a kid growing up and a teenager. All these various techniques go into showing all about this woman’s life up until this point. Her struggle with being the best is real in her life. That’s a classic trope of successful athletes.

Annette Bening has had a long and storied career. She’s been everything from romantic comedies like Ruby Sparks to coming-of-age dramas like 20th Century Woman. Her roles in The Kids Are All Right, American Beauty and The American President have defined her as one of the best living actresses today. The role of Diana Nyad though, could get her another Academy Award nomination. She just becomes this woman. It looks like she trained hard for the swimming aspects of the role. They couldn’t have been easy. The hair and makeup that was applied to her made her look the part and that helped her become this driven woman. She also used the book to show how she was as a person. She wasn’t the best person to get along with. Bening showed these aspects in her performance.

.With an award-worthy performance from Being also comes stellar performances by both Jodie Foster, two-time Academy Award Winner for The Silence of the Lambs and The Accused, and Rhys Ifans. They both support Bening perfectly. She needs these two opposing views on things involving the swim to balance her overbearing personality and drive to succeed. They both are terrific in these roles but this is mainly a Bening Tour De Force.

The main aspect of the movie is about swimming and I thought that these scenes were handled very well by the directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chia Vasarhelyi, the team behind Free Solo and The Rescue. They are fantastic filmmakers. They were able to show the main character in a first-person way. The camera was right there in her face and around the boat that was following. They showed her underwater and in various scenes of stress. It was a great first-person way of filming this woman while she was trying to achieve this massive goal. I was blown away by their filmmaking style in these scenes particularly.

Nyad was a very good film on par and very similar in ways to Rocky. That’s the vibe I got with this film and story. Even though Rocky Balboa was a nicer person overall the movie is quiet and an achievement. Bening gives an Awards worthy performance as this very tough woman who won’t take no for an answer regarding to do this incredible feat. The supporting cast was stellar as well but the real winners here are the viewers with this inspiring film. This woman is someone everybody should look up to as far as athletes and senior citizens go. The directors did a great job as well in their first narrative film.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen