One of the worst

Rating: 4/10 (31 March 2003)

I'm sorry, but i just couldn't bring myself to give a rating higher than 2 for this movie. i felt that the 2 hours and 40 minutes that i spent watching this movie was an immense waste of my time.
first off, for such a melodramatic flick, it had a surprisingly obscure plot. if anyone here realized that willie beamen's arrogance was a problem, i admire you. at no point in the movie did D'amato mention to anyone that he was having problems with beamen, which would have helped us realize that.
furthermore, i thought that the performances were not what they should have been, especially with half of the main characters being portrayed by people who weren't even actors, i.e. Lawrence Taylor and L.L. Cool J. Those who were actors were good, just not in this movie. Al Pacino and James Woods are definitely capable of doing better performances, however
I would partially put that on the writers, for lack of an easy script with which to show emotion.
the major redeeming qualities, I can say, are the cinematography. Not great, but decent. Lord knows its hard to show what exactly what's going on during a football game when you're not actually there, but they do it quite well. the second is not necessarily a quality, but the pep talk at halftime during the last game was... inspiring.
overall, not a good movie by any means. ** out of 10