Premise: A former football star goes to prison where he's forced to coach the prisoners in a football game against the guards, who are also a semi-pro team.
I'll warn you now. This is going to be one of those Reactions where I focus on one small aspect of the movie rather than the movie itself. The movie is fine. Burt Reynolds drips with movie star swagger. It rides the line of comedy with real stakes well. It's pretty funny for not a lot of proven comedic stars in it. There's even some good commentary of race in the prisons.
What I'd like to really look at though is the Academy Award nomination for Film Editing that it received: its only nomination. Oddly, one of my only notes on the movie was the opposite. I noted that they really couldn't shoot football movies as well back then. Most of the football action in this is at a distance and not that different from broadcast angles. Look at more modern football shows and movies and you see the camera is part of the action. I imagine it's a reflection of the difference in the technology at the time, but it's funny to think that this movie was considered well-edited for how it shoots the game. Then again, we aren't that far removed from Bohemian Rhapsody winning the Film Editing Oscar. It's clear that people have always had trouble understanding editing.
I do like the ugliness of this era of sports movies. Bad News Bears, Slap Shot, and this all have pretty unlikeable leads. The characters aren't role models. They aren't competing at the highest levels of the sport. Despite being comedies, they do go after some meaty dramatic topics. I'm not sure that I prefer these to the Disney inspirational sports movie that's dominated the last 20 years, but they are a nice change of pace.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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