Review: Challengers (2024)

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is the kind of exciting, sexy, goofy good time that is fairly rare at the movies in 2024. For one, it’s a movie built on star power instead of IP; it’s an original script and a novel concept. It utilizes Zendaya while she enjoys the height of her star power and features two budding new stars in the Hollywood world: Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. It’s also a movie that is entertainment, first and foremost, but it’s not an action movie or a science-fiction pic. It’s a romantic sports drama that plays like a thriller and shoots tennis matches like action scenes. It’s charged by an exhilarating score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and shot with a playful sense of colour and close-up. It’s a movie that delights in visuals and style and attitude, but it’s not posturing and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a fun movie made for adults, which is worth celebrating and acknowledging, even if you aren’t a member of the Zendaya hive or don’t care about the film’s homoerotic subtext.

Challengers takes its title from the Challenger tournament in New Rochelle, New York, the lowest level of professional tennis match. In the film’s opening, we meet Mike Faist’s Art Donaldson, a former Grand Slam champion who has lost his edge. He needs some easy wins to build up his confidence before the US Open, so his wife and coach, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), enters him in the Challenger tournament. He cruises through the preliminary rounds dispatching lesser competition, but finds a challenge in the finals against promising low-ranked player, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). The problem: Patrick is Art’s former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.

The film uses the final match at the Challenger tournament as its frame narrative and cuts back and forth to moments in Art, Tashi, and Patrick’s shared past to elucidate their relationship and set up the personal, professional, and romantic stakes of the match. We see Art and Patrick as buddies and youth doubles champs before they meet Tashi, their interactions with her through college, and their crossing paths over the years. We become invested in their relationship with each other and intrigued by their shared desire for Tashi, who manipulates the men to live out her own desires.

Nothing that happens is particularly unpredictable in Challengers, but that’s not a problem as the love triangle is compelling and the characters are richly written and performed. You’re invested in learning more about them and watching them interact and grow (or fail to grow) over the years. O’Connor is particularly electric, with his cocky smirk and sweaty charm that makes you understand why he was the first to win Tashi’s heart over the more reserved and passive Art. But Faist and Zendaya are good too; Faist is understated, but always able to keep us engaged through his face. Zendaya leans into her star power and proves elusive on screen, which works in the film’s favour as it shoots her like a star. Her initial entrance on screen is treated like a royal procession through the use of music and framing.

The film delights in close-ups of these characters and the actors relish the visual attention. During the tennis matches, for instance, Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who is best known for his work with Apichatpong Weerasethakul) lets Faist’s and O’Connor’s faces do the talking, resting on a glance, letting a look speak volumes. There’s a whole conversation happening with eye lines and heavy breaths and glances off frame in Challengers, which is proof of the film’s strong command of visual storytelling. Whenever it cuts to Zendaya watching in the crowd, her stoic face is often hidden behind sunglasses. Zendaya’s supermodel poise and inscrutability make her irresistible; the men are dying to know what she’s thinking, so we want to know too.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross help provide lift to the film’s love triangle, providing the electric charge that is like the sexual current connecting these three people. The score is heavily influenced by house music and pumps in like a club version of their synthesizer-heavy work for The Social Network. Guadagnino has fun with the music too, clearly getting a kick out of having it blast into quiet moments or abruptly cut off depending on the character’s actions. The music punctuates actions in the film in a showy, cinematic way that underlines the playfulness of the whole film. It’s proof that Guadagnino wants to entertain and isn’t so concerned with realism to let it get in the way of a good time.

Challengers is entertaining. The 131 minutes breeze by. It’s relatively light, almost fluffy, but that’s not a problem for a movie with such interesting characters and captivating style. Not all movies need to be divided between prestige pictures and genre entertainment; a good movie with style and fun can come in all forms.

8 out of 10

Challengers (2024, USA)

Directed by Luca Guadagnino; written by Justin Kuritzkes; starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist.

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