Film of the Week: Tag

The premise intrigued me, and even more so when the trailer stated it was inspired by a true story. I wasn’t sure what to expect other than a group of men chasing each other in a game of tag throughout the month of May, every year. What I got was exactly that.

Tag is a genuine feel-good film, about a group of friends who hasn’t stopped playing, and therefore always as a reason to be together, no matter what they’re doing separately. This film’s story is centred around finally tagging Jerry (Jeremy Renner), who in thirty years has never been tagged.

The main theme of this film is friendship, there’s no doubt about that. It explores how the game has driven them forward, and how they’ve developed with the game. There’s passion and triumph with each attempt to tag Jerry, and above all, nothing but total motivation throughout. As we see in the end credits, a few of the attempts displayed in the films were actually performed by the real men who still continue to play to this day.

Tag is heart-warming, fun, and a film you can enjoy for the sake of wanting something to enjoy. I wouldn’t consider it a criticism saying you don’t have hundreds of images thrown at you with the expectation of putting them all together and if you don’t nothing would ever make sense; nor would I say it’s a negative thing stating it’s a film you have to prepare yourself for – it’s just a simple, fun, feel-good adventure that you can appreciate in its entirety.

There are a two moments that shouldn’t be there as they make the overall effect stated above a little clunky. Yes, it’s a feel-good film, and I did enjoy it for what it was, but two scenes stood out like sore thumbs. Those two moments only are so absurd they almost make it a different film entirely before snapping right back to being Tag again. Above all else, the scene where the four men try and get information out of the person at the gym was sudden and could’ve been completely different. They don’t actually do anything horrible, and they do acknowledge it’s not them to do something like that. It was hard to try and find an excuse for that scene being there – passion maybe does drive them forward before realising they are going a bit far, but after thirty years of playing the game, passion shouldn’t have allowed them to even go anywhere near the actions they stopped themselves from doing. The other scene was when Jerry had to get away from the group of friends without being tagged, and made them believe it was all true. Whilst one of the four immediately stated it was all fake, is it OK to fake something like that…

Those two scenes do need to be analysed a little closer and can’t really be talked about in this review as doing so would make those words stand out just as weird, and with that awkward feeling of inappropriateness. I can only describe the objective of those two scenes. If you haven’t seen the film, maybe you’d know what I am talking about and maybe you have a different opinion as to why they’re there. For me, though, those scenes were borderline uncomfortable. They were quick and maybe the film justified why they’re there, but it does need an in depth discussion before I can fully accept them being there.

As for the rest of the film, I did enjoy. As previously stated it is a genuinely feel-good film, about friendship and their passion to stay in each other’s lives for as long as possible, but it’s those two scenes that, if they weren’t there, would make the film so much better.

Thanks for reading
Antony Hudson
(TonyHadNouns)