namashi_1 Nick Nolte is Outstanding in his portrayal of a frustrated, ambitious basketball coach in 'Blue Chips'. The legendary actor, who's had a career full of amazing performances, tops himself, yet again with his portrayal in here. 'Blue Chips' Synopsis: A college basketball coach is forced to break the rules in order to get the players he needs to stay competitive.'Blue Chips' is an interesting watch. Ron Shelton's Screenplay is grasping & often-confounding. It depicts a human-story, full of human-emotions & gives Nolte ample score to the anchor the film. William Friedkin's Direction is good. Performance-Wise: Nolte is the life of the show. He's in complete command & holds the film from start to end. Its amongst his greatest performances, that proves us once again, what a fine actor Nolte is!On the whole, 'Blue Chips' works & Nolte doesn't miss a single beat.

Rodrigo Amaro The vicissitudes of winning or losing a game and doing the best you can to be successful at it whether playing clean or pulling some dirty tricks are what makes of "Blue Chips" an nice film whose main character played by Nick Nolte has to fight against the odds of losing another championship for another consecutive year. Here's a full-mouthed Basketball coach with lots of anger, high intelligence, knows how to conduct a team but he doesn't have much of a good team, and to built the team of his dream, he's gonna have to select new players but not in the traditional and right way by giving extra things to his players in order to get them on his team and also in college. He can't follow the rules by the book, the ones he created to himself in order to be successful at what he does but will he manage to play the game regardless of ethics?So, "Blue Chips" nicely builds its discourse of the importance of winning things in a fair way and shows how much someone can lose by breaking the rules. However, for a sport themed film this isn't so great as it could be, where's the director's energy to conduct the games scenes? It's not much involving when we have to watch the games but the dramatic and funny scenes compensates the trouble. Lacks energy, some thrills and at times even the dramatic sequences are monotonous and uninteresting. Nolte confuses extreme passion for a game with some overacting but he gives a decent performance here (but can you imagine Bob De Niro in this role? It would be excellent!). And along with him we have good supportive acting by Mary McDonnell, J.T. Walsh, Ed O'Neill and basketball legends Bob Cousy, Shaquille O'Neal among others. Right at the beginning Nolte gives this speech to the players about the impossibility of winning a game by being half-assed. You can do whatever half assed except winning. Wiser words were never spoken before and this film proves this when you have a great director like William Friedkin behind all this when it's quite visible he's not much suitable for this (and what's strange is Ron Shelton wrote this film and he's a specialist in making sport themed flicks, so why he didn't directed it in the first place?). So, in the end you can do things half-assed but just don't expect to win much sympathy, awards and recognition with it. Good film but it could've been better considering the talents involved. 6/10

alexkolokotronis This movie seems to have a funny and interesting idea from the outlook. Yet this movies never quite takes off in the right direction or any direction. Through the first half of the movie it builds up as a comedy. In the second half it tries to alter itself into an engaging drama. Personally I had no problem with Shaq and Penny Hardaway in the movie. Nick Nolte with his character fit perfectly. Still the writing was totally unimpressive and horrible except for the one scene with Nick Nolte at the end with his press conference. Everything else in this movie seems to be cliché and would not amuse anyone except for small kids. The supporting cast other than the three basketball players and Nolte's ex-wife fit perfectly or should I say match the poor and cliché writing of this movie. For example J.T. Walsh was cast as Happy. Happy was in charge or at least had connections that helped Nolte get his top notch recruits with illegal strategies such as buying houses, giving money and buying other luxurious items for the recruits' families. J.T. Walsh seemed very easy to spot as a corrupt and horrible man even though his character is supposed to have a low profile and be behind the scenes. This presents a huge problem for a key character who does seem to be quite believable. He is supposed to be the man doing things under the table instead he is totally visible to the public.As I said before the writing in this movie does not engage the audience because it doesn't take on its own identity. It is hard to call this a comedy with too few jokes and attempts to amuse the audience and it is hard to call this a drama with the movie trying to be portrayed as a comedy. This movie could have been easily fixed if there was more work done on the writing and the casting. Blue Chips attempts to show the corruption in college sports but it fails to show the many aspects of it. Such as the corporate sponsors and the pressure an athletic director is under of loosing their job. It does not show the competing colleges vying for the top recruits and most of all it does not show you how such pure and genuine feeling such as playing a sport can be so easily corrupted by the pressure and the need for winning from coaches and colleges to fans and corporate sponsors. This sounds like a lot but could have been very easily included in the movie without having to overextend this into a 2 1/2 hour movie.

Vladefan21 This isn't a bad movie at all. Considering the scandals that have come to light about college athletes receiving cars, houses, money, etc. this film has even more relevance today than it did when it first came out.To see a Shaquille O'Neal full of potential and natural talent (yet not yet spoiled by his own success) is a thrill - even for a Kings fan. His acting isn't the point; it's the few scenes that show him actually playing basketball that are worth watching for.