Really Surprised!

Disapointment

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

If it weren't for SLAP SHOT, this would probably be the most cynical sports movie ever made. Ted Kotcheff's version of Peter Gent's book casts Nick Nolte as a not quite over the hill pro football player struggling through the morass of corporate politics, crazy team- mates and myriad injuries. It's a great performance and he's well matched with Mac Davis as team quarterback and best friend. Few stones are left un-turned in this seedy look at the lives of professional athletes. While SLAP SHOT portrayed hockey players as foul-mouthed, tooth-less goons, the football players here as seen as drug-addled sex maniacs who lust after woman AND B12 shots with equal aplomb. Davis has many of the film's best lines, espousing much crackpot southern wisdom fitting just about every insane situation ("gross is when you go to kiss your grandpa good night and he sticks his tongue down your throat"). The outstanding supporting cast includes Charles Durning, Dabney Coleman, Bo Svenson (hilarious as the hot-headed Jo Bob Priddy), John Matuszak, Steve Forrest, G.D. Spradlin and Dayle Haddon as Nolte's level-headed love interest.

One of several films about beaten-up professional sports stars. One had Charlton Heston. This one has Nick Nolte. I get all of them mixed up. Usually the star has a final triumph and then quits while he's at the top, rather like Robert Redford in "The Natural". Come to think of it, the story doesn't have to be about sports. Charlton Heston played a similar role in the much better "Will Penny," as an aging cowboy realistically reduced to a life of three baths a year.Nick Nolte has some good scenes in this one. He's a laid-back football player for the North Dallas Bulls. He's not noticeably old but he's been so battered by playing the game he loves that he's dispirited, and the management doesn't like it. He should be playing for "the team." The management consists of Steve Forrest, Charles Durning, and G. D. Spradlin (in a semi-sympathetic role for a change). At the speech-ridden end, Nolte realizes that their argument about playing for the team is just so much horse hockey designed to win the championship and get Forrest's photo on the cover of time. Forrest is so rich he doesn't need the money that the team will make because he's a steel magnate, and a money magnet to boot. He only wants the glory, which is paid for by the blood of his players. Now, is that egocentricity or not? Nolte quits, presumably marries the girl (Dayle Hadden, beautiful but can't act), and retires to raise horses. Nolte was a little nervous about his two Big Scenes in the movie but he was my supporting player in "Weeds" and "Everybody Wins", so I helped him over the rough spots, as is the duty of any old pal.Genuine football fans -- and I'm not among their number -- will probably be disappointed because there aren't many scenes of football being played. Only one, really, and the set up isn't so hot, so it isn't as exciting as it should be. Redford's "The Natural," by contrast, had a great set up for the final game and the climax was spectacular and satisfying to our glands if not our aesthetics. Here, the most harrowing scene is when Nolte suffers a steroid shot behind his lemniscus in order to keep himself upright.The chief problem with the film is its lack of focus. What the hell is going on? Fast Eddy could talk about shooting pool in "The Hustler" and we could feel that his description, limited to only a few sentences, was authentic. The Germans call it Funktionslust, the love of doing what one does well. I didn't get it from Nolte or anybody else on the team, a couple of whom were bat-crap bonkers. None of them LOVED playing football.I guess the moral that we can drag in from somewhere outside the noösphere is that playing along with the team is childish and then when you grow up, you follow your own bliss. Spradlin even gets to quote the passage from St. Paul about "when I became a man, I put away childish things." But it's very confusing because we're told so often that Nolte has far more love for the game than he does for raising horses. His Funktionslust is a "childish thing"? I mean, you can see that the calculus doesn't quite work out. When I was a kid I wanted to be a catcher for the New York Yankees, but when I became a man I put away that childish thing because I realized I was a lousy ball player. Nolte, on the other hand, is supposed to be very good.Well, you can make up your own mind. I found it a little monotonous and basically dull and at cross-purposes with itself.

Fine sleeper film, very much a reflection of iconoclastic 1970's. Seldom has corruptive nature of professional sports been on more vivid display than here. Pro football (and others?) comes across as supremely exploitative of players, with millionaire owners collecting the reflected glory. Sure, the money is good as is the lure of easy women, while all the adulation is hard to resist, but the cost comes high as battered and bruised Nick Nolte finally figures out. Emphasis throughout is on obvious physical toll, but inner toll proves equally devastating. Team quarterback Mac Davis's sly character and coaching staff's slimy ploys illustrate that inner rot in sometimes subtle fashion. Davis's understated performance provides memorable glimpse of intelligent man trapped by own weaknesses. Also one of Nick Nolte's most natural performances in both a brilliant and unorthodox career. His Phil Elliot may not be as clever as Davis, but the love of the game is truer, helping him finally see through the clouds of hype. But where oh where was director Kotcheff when beleaguered non-actress Dale Haddon so clearly needed help. Her one and only expression, paralyzed fear, almost brings down the entire film. Was the casting of this ex-Playboy playmate Hugh Hefner's price for assistance with the production?Thanks Peter Gent for the gutsy expose' and Frank Yablans for bringing it to the screen intact. (After all those Monday evenings on TV, who could ever think of Tom Landry, Don Meredith or straight-laced Roger Staubach the same way again.) (Then too, fans might check out 1949's "Easy Living", a less caustic but also revealing film on the earlier days of pro football.) All in all, the screenplay of North Dallas is one of the best from the period -- humorous, savvy, and richly ironic -- the final boardroom scene arguably among the most compelling of any on sports. It's also one of the best arguments for getting athletics out of all those cathedrals of cult worship and back into neighborhood sandlots where they belong.

The old "Grid Iron" has long been a favourite topic of Film Makers. First the College Game, which truly hit the heights in the 'Roaring 20's" was the subject of fans passion, young boys admiration and the Gamblers fascination. Tobe a College Boy on the 'Varsity' was surely a close approximation of Heaven on Earth. But what about the Pros, Professional Football, that is? Wouldn't a talented College, Simon Pure Athlete like to try his hand at this Professional Game. The American Professional Football Association had been formed and soon thereafter, the name changed to The National Football League, and it had its problems.The early pro football 'clubs' bore a greater resemblance to what we would today call, "Semi-Pro" teams. That is generally, the membership paid for equipment and game uniforms. Travel was usually done by auto and wasn't too far as a rule. The typical entrant was usually from Small Town, USA, not Bigville. So we saw less the likes of the Chicago Cardinal sand more like Decatur(Illinois) Staleys, the Providence(Rhode Island)Steamrollers and the Canton(Ohio)Bulldogs.The first and only truly recognizable "star" was Jim Thorpe, who was elected the figurehead President of the League right at the start. Then the Chicago Bears signed Harold "Red" Grange, old number 77 from the University of Illinois. The Bears went on a Barnstorming Tour following that season, introducing a sports crazy public to the "Galloping Ghost" and the Pro Game.Other College Stars and "All Americans" followed, their names alone guaranteeing boosts at Box Office numbers. Guys like Elmer Leyden, Jim Crowley, Don Miller and Harry Stuhldreyer, collectively known as Coach Knute Rockne's Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, all did hitches in the Pro Ranks, before going into Coching and Business.So the Pro FootnallWorld that our story is one of maturity, having gone through years of ups and downs in the attendance figures. By this time, the Mid-1960's, things were generally pretty good financially, to say he least. Franchises in the NFL, which had reportedly originally cost $100.00, now hovered in the Million$, as teams played their schedules in increasingly modern facilities.The story/screenplay of NORTH DALLAS FORTY(1979) is by Pertr Gent, former Pro Footballer with the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. He was a graduate of Michigan State University, where his main Sport had been Basketball.In the screenplay a "DRAGNET" Style policy of "The Names have been changed to protect the Innocent.", and to prevent any civil litigation. All the characters' names are fictitious, of course. And as for the names of the various teams, we have ones like 'North Dallas Bulls' and 'Chicago Maurauders', but when a game is portrayed in the film, we all know who'w who in the real life counterpart.The whole drama unfolds in the space of a little better than about 2 weeks time. The main character, Phil Elliot, a veteran Wide Receiver,finds himself as being on the spot when a team mate receiver is injured and his(Elliot's)playing time will be greatly increased. We spend an awful lot of time following him around town, at practice, servicing a girlfriend of one of the owning family Hunter Brothers.He also meet up with a very lovely Lady at a team party, and strikes up a romance, the real thing, I mean! We are shown the life of a pro athlete, how they want for nothing, but crave everything intangible, like Love, Security, Respect and Home.The relationships of players as "friends" and the intricate construction of the Pro Sports Team "Office Politics" are given a thoroughly complete, through the microscope examination.It is in the end, that we and our story's protagonist are suddenly made aware of what we really are to the public and the Ownership.The point of view is of Author Peter Gent, who did go through several seasons on the rosters of both Dallas and N.Y.Giants. He was always known as a sort of "Football Non-Conformist", a sort of 'flake', if you will. But, we all know that there are 3 sides to every story. Your side, My side and the True Side! We'll take Mr. Gent's word for it as far as it goes. This is the way he saw it and we can't dispute anything first hand. Besides, were you there, Schultz? And the typical , that f