New Golf Movie, '5 Hour Friends,' Debuts Feb. 3
There's a new golf movie on the way, and it arrives on Feb. 3, 2015. It's called 5 Hour Friends (buy it or stream it) and stars former Golden Globe nominee Tom Sizemore.
5 Hour Friends had a very limited theatrical release in March/April of 2014, it appears mostly in the San Diego, Calif., area (because it was shot on location there, including at Torrey Pines). The Feb. 3 release is to video-on-demand. The movie will be available on VOD through major TV cable outlets as Cox, Charter, Verizon and Dish (among many others), as well as available on VOD through other outlets such as iTunes, Vudu and Amazon. You can get a full list of VOD option on the movie's website.
So what is 5 Hour Friends all about? The one-sentence description on the website of production company 905 Productions is this: "A middle-aged golfer and lifelong Lothario finally gets a taste of his own medicine when he meets a confident but needy female lawyer."
A bit more description comes from the company's news release about the flick:
"Tom Sizemore breaks away from his usual tough guy character to play scratch golfer and San Diego ad exec Timothy Bonner in the new feature film, 5 Hour Friends. ... Sizemore plays a scrupulously honest golfer – who cheats on all the women in his life."Filmed at San Diego’s Balboa Park and Torrey Pines golf courses, Sizemore looks to win the San Diego amateur golf championship when his plans are derailed by Carla Bianchi, a fiery litigator with whom he engages in a stormy love/hate relationship.
"The movie’s title refers to the 'friends' one meets for five hours on a golf course only to never see them again when the game is over. Sizemore is as uncommitted to the friends he meets on the golf course as he is to the women in his life. Dedicated to playing by the rules on the course, he violates the rules of life with abandon. Something has to give and does."
Sizemore is a very good actor, when he wants to be. His co-stars include Kimberlin Brown, best-known for roles on multiple daytime soap operas.
Let's watch the trailer:
How good 5 Hours Friends is (or isn't) will depend, as with any movie, on the quality of the script, the direction, the acting. But with golf movies, there's always an extra element (at least for golfers in the audience): How realistic is the golf? Can you tell that the actors are golfers in real life? Or is it apparent they could never pull off the shots the movie shows them hitting? Do they look like people who learned to golf a week before production of the movie started? There's nothing worse in a golf movie than a terrible golfer being passed off as a great golfer.
We can at least say that shouldn't be a problem with 5 Hour Friends. Sizemore and Brown are good golfers in real life. For example, here is Kimberlin Brown displaying excellent form during a pro-am in 2002:
Since the movie did get a limited theatrical release, there are a few reviews of it already out there. IMDB users rate it 6.3 out of 10. On Rotten Tomatoes, the rating is 50-percent. A brief review in a San Diego publication published last year called 5 Hour Friends a "highly watchable, character-driven throwback" with "genuine dialog and sincere performances." It lauds Sizemore and the "strong, complex performances" by Brown and supporting actress Musetta Vander.
If you watch it (or already have), let us know what you think.
