Comwayon
A Disappointing Continuation
Humbersi
The first must-see film of the year.
pointyfilippa
The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
Kris Chan
This movie is offensive on many levels. The acting and directing makes this movie feel like a straight-to-TV movie. Except I wouldn't deem this movie suitable for a television audience. How tiresome is the theme of movies where the main characters are High Schoolers. The High School children are portrayed as adults ultimately. The movie showcases underage drinking as being normal and acceptable behavior. And it's full of underage High School children engaging in sexual activity. Showing High School children having sex is ultimately child pornography without nudity. These movies about High School kids drinking and having sex are so crude that the fictional High School characters portrayed wouldn't even be allowed to rent this movie themselves in real life. And to top all of this lewd behavior off, the adult main character is some creeper psycho who watches High School football games by himself and then trespasses into the High School to retrieve the names of the boys who didn't make the Varsity team and goes around town stalking them to recruit them onto his fantasy boys football team. I found myself watching this movie from an observational objective viewpoint just to study the type of mainstream Hollwood filth that gets fed into the minds of the masses who are conditioned to perceive what I consider to be filthy smut as normal.
nm1649096
sadly this film is a diamond lost in a coal mine. No one I know has heard about it. But it is SOOOO AMAZING THAT after 2 minutes of it airing at 3am (despite the fact I have to sleep and work in a couple hours!!!)I could not stop watching. By far David Morse GREATEST performance ever as well as quite possibly one of Ryan Goslings best as well. Both leave any actor watching, with the utmost inspiration for developing ones own craft. Definitely performances to aspire to in any actors career. If this film is a testament to the Smith Brothers ability to direct actors, it certainly leaves no reservations in my mind! Hopefully one day I will be fortunate enough to work with such talents.
noralee
I don't usually find movies first by their soundtrack, but I first heard of "The Slaughter Rule" because Jay Farrar, of the late Uncle Tupelo, did the score and song selections, including by Vic Chestnutt, the Flatlanders, and the Pernice Brothers. So I was intrigued when I saw it was on Sundance Channel as it hadn't appeared on screens in New York.
The debut jointly written/directed feature of twin brothers Andrew and Alex Smith, the film has a lot of similarity to Tom Cruise's early "All the Right Moves," even down to charismatic young star Ryan Gosling clearly being a movie star hunk of the future. Set in the brothers' home area of rugged (and very desolate) Montana in the fall, this film takes its working class football frame of athlete seeking father figure and coach conflict much further in examining maleness and the implications of the homo-eroticism of such sports much further.
It bravely (particularly by David Morse in a touchingly agonized performance) goes into the breach of what much discussion of current scandals has avoided, at the confused nexus of pedophilia and sexual identity, particularly for teen-age boys. There's also a dollop of racial issues via the very realistically portrayed poverty of the Native Americans. The women are mostly helpless within this overwhelmingly male environment, and their best choice for survival is just to leave, as unromantically satisfying as that is.This ranks in the gritty tradition of sports movies as a setting to demonstrate social tensions like "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" than more popular fare.
leparrain5
I really enjoyed this film in every way, I am a city boy and this heartland story really was wonderful even for a city kid like myself. The acting is excellent to say the least, it's moving, and gets your blood flowing, it's simply real. First time I've ever seen Ryan Gosling's work and he was fantastic, wow this kid is like 22 years old and what a performance. Everyone is great in this one, David Morse is fantastic as well. David Cale another strong acting job here, Clea DuVall is amazingly graceful and poetic in her role... I wish I could see these actors more and more and in parts as strong as in this film. I can't say more, thanks for a wonderful film.
