I don't like football. I liked this movie.

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2003)

As the movie starts, the fictional Miami Sharks are playing a professional football game. I could feel the players hitting each other, and my TV is only 13 inches; that's good filmmaking. Two quarterbacks get injured and the task of leading the offense falls to Willie Beamen, who seems pretty pathetic. The team has already lost several games, and the outcome of this one appears inevitable. Not so; Beamen is more than capable, and if not for a last-second touchdown by the other team, the Sharks would have won. Beamen becomes a national celebrity as the Sharks win one game after another. However, the first-string quarterback, a real leader, will come back sooner or later, and Beamen has to accept this fact. He is reminded that he is winning games, but he is not a leader and doesn't play by the rules.
Lots of good acting performances here. Cameron Diaz is the pretty, occasionally sweet, but often tough daughter of the deceased former owner; unlike her father, she wants to have a say in the decisions of head coach Tony D'Amato (which doesn't make the coach happy), and she intends to sell the team and possibly move it to Los Angeles (now this IS fiction: in the movie, Los Angeles already has a pro football team). Jamie Foxx is surprisingly good as Beamen; I thought of him as a silly comic actor, but he comes across well in the dramatic scenes, still managing to be quite funny at other times. I wasn't too pleased with one scene that suggested he was abusive to his girlfriend (which he never was), but the character was mostly easygoing off the field. James Woods did well as a team doctor with questionable ethics; he seemed to care more about who played than about sound medical judgment. Charlton Heston had a pleasant cameo appearance. And of course, if anyone could inspire these losers to become winners, it was Al Pacino as D'Amato, giving a strong performance, especially in the locker room where he really got the players fired up. The sportscasters were very professional-sounding too.
The music was mostly loud, but there was something for nearly every taste, including what I believe was a Native American performance. Unusual editing meant people would not likely get bored even in slow scenes; in Coach D'Amato's apartment, as the coach and Beamen talked about how Beamen could improve, there was constant switching back and forth between the two men talking and a Roman Empire gladiator-type movie the coach was apparently watching when Beamen arrived. And there must have been a ton of profanity; sometimes I felt like I was watching a Hong Kong action film.
This was not for people who like their entertainment quiet, but it was a change of pace for me. A good job overall.