The Madden Trailer Makes Us Wonder How David O. Russell Is Still Making Movies

No film should ever be pre-judged on the strength of its trailer. Sometimes, the quality of the movie is difficult to convey in two minutes. Other times, the folks in charge of cutting the trailer — which often isn't the director — simply miss the mark.

In the case of David O. Russell's "Madden," though, I'm inclined to make an exception.

To be fair to Russell, I believe he was faced with an insurmountable challenge from the start. Is there an actor on the planet who could truly capture the larger-than-life personality of NFL coach and commentator John Madden? When Russell took his first crack at getting this biopic before cameras, he cast Will Ferrell as Madden himself. Ferrell certainly has energy to spare, but when Russell later pivoted to Nicolas Cage, I expected nothing short of a disaster.

Aside from the fact that he bears absolutely zero resemblance to Madden, Cage is a live-wire in all the wrong ways. There's too much danger in his brand of wildness, whereas Madden was the proverbial guy with whom you'd love to have a beer (which is why he was the perfect pitchman for Miller Lite). So, I'm not at all shocked that he looks grotesquely miscast in the just-released trailer for "Madden." But he's not the only reason this film should've never been greenlit. Russell's once formidable directorial gifts, on display in movies like "Flirting with Disaster" and "Three Kings," have vanished. Oscar voters were overly kind to his films because he got great performances out of his actors (though his methods can be exhausting, as Amy Adams has revealed). Now, he seems to have completely lost it, because this trailer is wretched.

David O. Russell's "Madden" looks like a dress-up game of a biopic. Some of the real-life characters are well cast (Christian Bale is eerily spot-on as hard-charging Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis), and I'm sure John Mulaney will be amusing as Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins (who created the Madden NFL video game franchise). But Nicolas Cage throws everything off with his dreadful John Madden impersonation. I'll have to wait to see the film to find out if there are any fine shadings to what I'll charitably call a performance, but, from what I've glimpsed thus far, Cage's work here makes Leonardo DiCaprio's J. Edgar Hoover look like Denzel Washington's Malcolm X.

Given how poorly staged the boxing scenes were in "The Fighter," I'm queasily curious to see how badly Russell botches the pro football action. He's at least got 10-time Oscar nominee and three-time winner Robert Richardson handling the cinematography, yet "Madden" looks as visually pedestrian as Russell's output over the last 16 years. And let's not forget the filmmaker's history of verbal abuse on set, like the time George Clooney was compelled to physically confront him over the mistreatment of an extra on the set of "Three Kings." Russell was also accused of sexual assault by his then 19-year-old transgender niece (though no charges were filed).

And yet, he's still an A-list filmmaker who attracts top-flight talent. Could "Madden" be the film that finally lands him in directors' jail? We'll find out when it hits Prime Video on November 18, 2026.