Best football movie ever, period.

Rating: 10/10 (29 June 2001)

This movie is great, but it's not for everyone. Only those who know football or have at least half a brain would like it. Oliver Stone takes American Football and shows his audience every minute aspect of the game, and yes, it takes a while, but the outcome is nothing less than perfection. Every scene of the movie adds more to the overall picture Stone portrays.

The movie is about people struggling, plain and simple. Tony D'Amato struggles to keep his job and to keep his team of overpriced athletes from falling apart. Willie Beamen struggles to win games his way, not trusting those around him who he feels have hurt him in the past. And Cap Rooney struggles with a game that chewed him up, spit him out, and passed him by. The best scene in the whole movie is the confrontation between Beamen and D'Amato, the ultimate conflict between old school and new school football. It shows how the greatest players the game has ever seen sacrificed their bodies, their loved ones, and sometimes their minds to a game that gives most people very little in return. Also, we see how players today consider losing money the greatest sacrifice of all.
However, in order to like the movie, you have to go further than skin deep into it. Yes, the action scenes speed up and slow down, and seem to have no direction in them. But if you've ever played real football (high school football doesn't count here), you feel right at home in the action scenes. Things happen seemingly at random, players come out of nowhere, yet there is an incredible order and logic to it all. If you pay attention (I know that's a lot to ask) you'll find that as the movie progresses and Willie Beamen gets acclimated to the game, the football scenes slow down, although they remain chaotic.
The movie is loud, brutal and honest. No, it's not the polished product that you see on Sundays. But Stone doesn't need to polish it because that's all we know. He breaks it down and shows the game to us naked. Players argue in the huddle and fight in the locker room. And all the "unrealistic" scenes - the alligator in the shower, a car cut in half, etc. - they all actually happened at one point or another among NFL players. And players do come from nowhere to make it big - can anyone say Jay Fiedler?

All in all, I wanted more after the movie was over, even after well over two hours of movie time. Excellent flick - 10/10