Robert J. Maxwell 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.

chad parlett (ctelrap) "Better football through chemistry" is a line of Nick Nolte's as he's being shot up with painkillers before the big game. When I first saw this in 1979, I found it amusing; now I find it prophetic. Sure it has it's sexist moments, but those are mere reflections of the times. The theme is that of abuse. These are modern gladiators, and we watch this sport as did the Romans. It's our bread and games. The new findings that NFL teams sent injured players into games full of drugs gives this film new meaning. Head injuries now show concussions that were untreated, and old players now have addictions and crippling arthritis. This was an amusing movie in it's day, but it's not as funny anymore.

jeremy3 This movie ranks up with Hoosiers, Remember The Titans, Eight Men Out, and other outstanding sports' movies. However, this movie may be one of the most accurate and realistic. Nick Nolte is excellent as an aging receiver with gifted hands. Nolte has taken a beating in his profession. Pain killers is not even an option to avoid. The intense pressure and training is portrayed in a very gritty way. The brutality and luck involved in surviving intact is portrayed no better in any other movie. And yet, I would say that this movie was from the football lover's perspective. The movie used some real pro footballers. No matter how bad things got, no one wanted to quit on the team. The footballer lived for the thrill of the game. Lastly, the money side/management side has never been portrayed better in a sport's movie. Dabney Coleman plays the soul-less main investor in the team. No matter how much Nolte's character gave, the business side was going to get him in the end. There was enormous tension between the coaches and the players. The coaches demanded perfection. The players thrived on the spirit of the game, not being treated like robots. The players feared the coaches, but also despised them. I was surprised how good Mac Davis was. He is a singer, but seemed to get how to play a quarterback on a pro team with great believability.

jonathan-577 The opening is perfect, with Nick Nolte's football pro waking up with a bloody nose and feeling every hit from the night before as he tries to navigate the kitchen. The ending is awful, with Duddy Kravitz (and, er, First Blood) director Kotcheff channeling Stanley Kramer in a big speechifying boardroom rigamarole. In between is a pretty fair expose of the business of American sports, with the players ENCOURAGED to remain stupid childish louts so they'll be easier to manage. Unfortunately this movie really wants it both ways on the gender thing - the Smart Girl who rescues Nolte from the daily grind is just a device to facilitate domestic bliss, nothing new there. And condemnations of misogynist violence are married to gratuitous boob shots. Not at all as bad as that makes it sound, but when I recall this movie I remember the lapses, not the many nice touches in between.