SnoopyStyle
Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) is the coach of the De La Salle Spartans in Concord, California. In 2003, they win their 12th consecutive championships and a unimaginable streak of 151 wins. Graduates Cam Colvin and T.K. Kelly are friends facing challenges. Bob has a heart attack and is forced to stop coaching. His son Danny has trouble catching and is frustrated with his dad. His wife Bev (Laura Dern) wants him to accept the college job offers. Chris Ryan has a chance to break the state TD record and suffers under his demanding father Mickey Ryan (Clancy Brown). Coach Ladouceur is able to return but the team loses the first two games. Then they face the #1 ranked team in the state, Long Beach Polytechnic High School.The true story and Bob Ladouceur's message forces the movie to struggle for a more traditional drama. The graduates' story is important but they're separated from the team's main story. The game against Long Beach is the most dramatic but it happens midway in the movie. However, this message movie needs to continue so that the message can be explained and end with the final game. It's not that the final game that is the most important but the final play which delivers the morality tale. Quite frankly, the last half of the movie should be done in an extended postscript. The drama is in the first three games.
Bryan Kluger
The inspirational sports movie genre always musters up a successful box office receipt and draws large crowds to the theater over the weekend. From films like 'Remember the Titans' to 'Glory Road' to even 'Miracle', these movies had great performances, cohesive story telling, excellent action scenes, and a powerful message that was executed very well to pull our heart strings and entertain us in the span of two hours. I really wish that I could say the same for Thomas Carter's adaptation of the real life story of the De La Salle Spartan football team in his film 'When The Game Stands Tall'.I'm sure the studio was banking on the high school crowd to spend their hard earned money on this one, but with its bad story telling, cheesy dialogue, and terrible acting, I'm thinking this film is a few yards short of a touchdown. Director Thomas Carter has a pretty impressive resume. With films like 'Swing Kids', 'Coach Carter', 'Save the Last Dance', and 'Metro'; you know he is fully capable of making something great, but it seems like he was asleep at the wheel for this outing.'When the Game Stands Tall' follows the real life De La Salle Spartan football team where real life coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) has led his team along with his assistant coach Terry Eidson(Michael Chiklis) to a record shattering 151 straight wins in a row back in 2003. But the film doesn't capture the moments of their impressive winning streak. Instead it picks up around 2004, where their streak is broken due to one of their teammates being murdered before heading off to college on a major scholarship, Coach Ladouceur having a major heart attack, and another teammate who has lost his whole family and has become an orphan. It's a lot to take in, and I feel like we would have taken this journey with these characters, but the performances were all too bland.Underneath all of the blood, sweat, and tears of the his football program, is a very religious undertone, which the studio neglected to show in their trailers. De La Salle High School is in fact a very religious Catholic High School where Ladouceur not only coaches the football team, but teaches the Gospel to his students, which he incorporates onto the field as well. There is not ten minutes that goes by where we don't have a religious and somewhat inspiring speech by the coach, no matter if it is about coming together as a football team to play the perfect game, picking yourself up after a loss, or deciding to take a better job, we are hit over the head with these monologues so much so that we are taken away from the true story here.Even when the football team is forced to spend the day at a veteran rehab facility, where they see newly wounded and amputated soldiers healing, who still have the sense of humor and will to push themselves to learn to walk and talk again in order to teach these high school football players about brotherhood and picking yourself back up, you can't help but feel its cheesiness. The two plot points of the film that I thought were actually worth exploring, weren't explored at all, which was Ladouceur's wife played by the lovely Laura Dern, who does a sincere job, but given the bad script can only go so far, and is left on the sidelines, except only when she encourages her husband to take a college coaching job. The other is with one of the star football players on the team and his dad who is an abusive and mean son-of-a- bitch who thinks that winning is the only thing in life and if his son doesn't bring home the gold, he'll pay for it in bruises. Again, we see glimpses of these aspects, but it never really goes anywhere.Perhaps the one thing that Carter did extremely well here was the camera-work on the football field, which oddly enough, he had someone else direct. You can feel every hit, tackle and take down, as if it were happening to you. It's brutal, fast paced, and well edited, as you'll always be able to follow what's happening on the field. It was the highlight of the movie. It seems like Caviezel lost his ability to act in this film, as he is always an emotionless robot, void of showing any sentiment to whatever is happening around him. Chiklis is always funny and gives it his all and the rest of the football team do a decent job, but nobody is stand out. Sure, it's impressive that the real life high school football team won 151 games in a row and that the message here is a good message, but with the bland acting and its terrible script and poor execution, this game certainly doesn't stand tall.
mattkratz
This movie isn't so much about sports as it is about life and the lessons learned in it. I.e., when you fall, you get back up and how. I always like a good inspirational true story like that. The story involves a high school football team whose record 151-game winning streak comes to an end and the the resulting fallout. The coach deals with some issues (health, family, etc.), and tragedy befalls the team. A player has to deal with the fact the fact that his father wants him to break the state touchdown record more than he does. However, the coach is a true inspiration to everyone (as is the assistant coach), and everyone (the team and the family) bands together in this remarkable film that I recommend to everyone. Jim Caviezel is remarkable in the lead.*** out of ****
