"On any given Sunday you may win or loose..."

"...But the important thing is whether you win or loose like a man."

So goes the line that pretty much sums up the most crucial theme in what I regard as one of the greatest sports movies of the 90's. If you watched this movie and came away from it thinking, "Yeah, it was just another football movie", you probably got about 1 percent of the point. Though it's probably one of the best sports movies of the decade, what makes it so great was the fact that it was about so much more than the game of football. It used the game and the importance of team unity as a metaphor for life in general. The cast is full of characters with unique stories to tell and pearls of wisdom to relate through them.

Plot:
Al Pacino is an aging football coach who must rebuild a team handicapped by injuries and on a downward slide as the championship game approaches. When two of his star quarterbacks go down in one game he has to depend on an inexperienced third stringer, Willie Beamen. At first, the New QB's performance does not inspire anyone's confidence, and when he relieves himself of the contents of his lunch on the football field, everyone thinks it's time to write the season off.(Nice bit of comic relief by the way). But somehow, Pacino's magical charm puts Beamen at ease and he begins to perform like a star. Unfortunately, events take a turn for the worse when his sudden success goes to his head and he forgets that the game involves a team effort.

The plot is coherent, though anything but straight forward because of its complexity. On one level, it's about healing a team and winning a football championship. On another it's about a young man who must learn from many tired veterans that victory itself in life is not as important as who you fight for it with.

All of the subplots were extremely interesting and fascinating, helping us to see the game and its underlying politics and dramas from several different perspectives. There's the aging coach who must rationalize risking the health and well being of his players in the name of....what? That's one question the movie searches for an answer to. There's the defensive lineman playing at the risk of permanent injury or possible death... for what? A million dollar bonus? Or the team doctor who manipulates test results so that players who are not really healthy enough to be on the field still end up there.

The subplots are a big plus in that they add a lot to the story by piecing together various perspectives and experiences. The only problem I may have had with the movie was that it was a bit too long. It's one of those annoying things where you keep seeing scenes that look like they could be the ending, but you look at the cover and there's another 40 minutes left. When the ending does come though, it's quite a surprise.

Action:

It's raw, and exciting, and sometimes funny. I admit, I couldn't help but find the look of pure terror in Beamen's eyes when he first plays and his vomiting ritual quite amusing. Of course, there were also the perfunctory appeals to shock factor, such as one player's loss of an eye. And then there were those glamorously unrealistic acrobatic scenes for the sake of suspense and drama that are common in every football movie, such as the gut-wrenching tripple flip/summer-saults over defenders and into the end zone and those slow motion 40 yard quarter-back runs through a whole field of opposing team members. It was a nice mix though, mostly realistic re-enactments of a football game with the Hollywood stuff coming only at climaxes in the action.

Acting:

As usual, Pacino's range and dynamic abilities make him stand out. As head coach Damato, he can be ferocious and passionate one minute and broken down and depressed the next, or any number of things in between, and you believe every minute of it, especially in the numerous clashes he has with the team's owner over control of the team.

Lawrence Taylor's performance as the aforementioned defensive lineman playing with his life in his hands is surprisingly impressive. At one point when he delivers a pearl of wisdom about the point of life and football to Jamie Fox's character in a steam room, I thought it was one of his best scenes in the movie.

Jim Brown is also believable as the defensive coordinator and close friend of the head coach. However, I thought he tried too hard to be the ultimate football tough man and overdid it in some scenes.

Dennis Quaid also does well as the injured team captain whose quarterback position is now in question due to the performance of Beamen, his once temporary replacement who may end up leading the team to a championship. He provides the obvious role model that Beamen takes awhile to figure out he should be learning from. He is frustrated because his body may not take much more football. However, because he is such a selfless veteran leader, his return is needed by a football club being torn apart by arrogance and personal ambition and also demanded by a domineering wife who in her own words 'married a football player, not a sports analyzer." By the way, though her part was rather small, it was very well acted.

Character development:

What's best about the characters in the movies is not just their depth, but their dynamic nature. Nearly everyone changes somehow in the course of the film. Jamie Fox's character evolves from a third string quarterback waiting in the shadows for his chance, to a sudden superstar with an expanding ego, to a humbled team player. Lawrence Taylor's character was one of the more complex, relating the meaning of life and the most important things in it to Beamen in one scene and demanding extra shots of quartezone so he can play with an injured neck and earn his million dollar bonus in the next. The head coach is a tired old man for whom the whole saga is a search for redemption and validation of his life's work and philosophies.

The only true disappointment I found was the younger female team owner, played by Cameron Diaz. At first she comes off as unrelentingly tough, cold, calculating and assertive. Her battles with Pacino's character over control of the team make for some of the most fiery, passionate, and splendidly acted scenes of the movie.They began to explore her weaker side, but didn't really do it deeply enough to make us sympathize. In one scene we overhear her mother telling coach Damato about how her father, the original owner, really only wanted a son, and how she was a disappointment to him. This evokes some sympathy, placing the idea in our minds that maybe she acts the way she does because she's trying to overcompensate. However, it's soon forgotten because that's the last mention that we hear of it, and she never reacts to those words.

Overall:

This movie is worth every penny, whether you saw it in theaters, rented it, or did both. It is funny, poignant, complex, and powerful, and loaded with themes on life and on the nature of a team. You do not have to be a football fan to appreciate it. You just have to be able to sit still for three hours. Some I've spoken to say it gives too much of a jaded view of football, but with Oliver Stone at least some cynicism is expected regardless of subject matter, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Personally, I saw it in theaters and paid to rent it twice and still feel like I haven't wasted a cent.