Interesting, good-bad.

Rating: Null/10 (11 March 2001)

I have a really Mixed viewpoint on this flick, overall I liked it but...there are somethings that weren't that good.
Some SPOILERS POSSIBLE BELOW!!
Good points: The football action, not badly choreographed, hard hitting, heck they even called back a possible game winning TD due to Holding! Shock! Yes it DOES happen! A Hollywood sports flick that shows some penalties!
Famous NFL faces-Dick Butkus, Barry Switzer, Jim Brown and Johnny Unitas(I missed him first time through), and of course L.T. He was really good, by the way. I liked that.
Stone copping the John Elway 'Somersault-run' from the Broncs-Packers BlooperBowl 3 years ago. Quaid kinda was playing Elway/Marino wasn't he? That was fun to see.
L.T's performance. One of the best jock-acting jobs I've ever seen. He deserves to be given his dues for that too. And hey, they called him 'Shark'-yup he always reminded me of one, to be honest.
Not-so-Great stuff:
Lousy team Uni's and Names. I mean-the Emperors? the Crusaders?? the Knights?? Rhinos I could see. And what was up with the colors? It was like watching bad USFL/CFL/XFL games-Orange and red and brown? You gotta be kidding me.
James Woods role-I like him alot-but what was he given to work with here? They didn't even bother to keep him round long enough to matter-was his role cut down in editing or what?
Pacino as coach actually was OK-perf. especially. But no he didn't exactly remind me of Tom Landry or Madden, sure.
Can do without the pointless Heston cameos-I am a fan but what was the point of Ben-Hur footage and all that?? Give him more to do or don't bother.
Diaz and Lauren Holly were fine-but they really oughta try eating more than once a day. LL Cool J did a pretty decent job as Terrell Davis but struck me as being too hefty, not as in like Jerome Bettis hefty but Kirby Puckett Hefty. Not a running back guys.
Stone's Cossell bit was fun actually, I liked it, kidding himself somewhat. I think he just wanted to put out a fun, non-60's oriented flick and that is what he did. We coulda done without the eyeball on the ground or all that puking though, seems to me. The players milieu of broads, booze, coke and stuff was actually on target.
I didn't quite buy Jami Foxx's making the cover of virtually every magazine in the land AND being on a Roy Firestone-like ESPN show AND doing Mike Jordan levels of ads simply after coming in and winning 2 games like that late in the season. Just Doesn't happen. Oh well.
Overall a pretty good effort, worthwhile, not a documentary.
**1/2 outta ****