Borg vs McEnroe

It’s the summer of 1980 and Bjˆrn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) is the top tennis player in the world, dominating the sport both on and off the court. A powerful and rigorously disciplined player, there is only one obstacle in his pursuit of a record-breaking fifth Wimbledon championship: the highly talented but ferociously abrasive young American, John McEnroe (a perfectly cast Shia LaBeouf). With three days until the tournament begins, Borg trains religiously in his lavish Monaco home, aided by his coach and mentor Lennart (Stellan SkarsgÂrd) and girlfriend Mariana (Tuva Novotny). But McEnroe’s explosive confidence and wrecking-ball persona continue to infiltrate Borg’s ice-cool and normally unshakable temperament. With each man the antithesis of the other, both players delve into their formative memories as the climactic tournament draws near and anticipation reaches fever pitch. Visceral and breathlessly tense, the match itself–regarded as one of the greatest of all time–would mark the pinnacle of the ‘Fire and Ice’ rivalry between Borg and McEnroe; an exhilarating battle of personalities that set the world of tennis alight. (Janus Metz, 2017, Sweden, 1:47)