Muddled overall, but perceptive and brutally realistic, North Dallas Forty also benefits from strong performances by Nick Nolte and Charles Durning. Football fans will likely find it fascinating.
Muddled overall, but perceptive and brutally realistic, North Dallas Forty also benefits from strong performances by Nick Nolte and Charles Durning. Football fans will likely find it fascinating.
In a society in which major league sporting events have replaced Sunday worship as the religion of choice, North Dallas Forty appears like a desecration at the altar. In this film, directed by Ted Kotcheff (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz), the National Football League is revealed to be more about the money than the game. Nick Nolte is North Dallas Bulls pass-catcher Phillip Elliott, whose cynicism and independent spirit is looked upon as troublesome by team coaches Johnson (Charles Durning)
and Strothers (G.D. Spradlin) and team owner Conrad Hunter (Steve Forrest). Elliot, at the end of his career and wise to the way players are bought and sold like cattle, goes through the games pumped up on painkillers conveniently provided by the management. His teammates include savvy quarterback Maxwell (Mac Davis) and lunk-headed defensive lineman Jo Bob Priddy (Bo Svenson), who deal with the impersonality and back-biting of the game through off-field diversions. When the Bulls management benches Elliot after manipulating him to help train a fellow teammate, Elliot has to decide whether there is more to life than the game that he loves. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
The leading man, Nick Nolte, has a physical authority and a clowning, irreverent manner that lend the film some semblance of continuity, even when it's about to flounder.
It relies upon your belief in the inherent nobility of the sport... If you believe that, this is the greatest sports movie ever made. If you don't, it's a wallow in self-pity.
Something of a mess, both in terms of the wayward plot which rambles all over the place, and in terms of the rather muddled juggling of audience sympathies.
It's still fascinating to get a glimpse of what athletes sacrifice to entertain us. It would have been considerably more fascinating if more of the people involved had seemed more human.
Realistic feeling film about pro football close up and painful. Good performances by all. Not at all what I was expecting. Started out way macho and full of testosterony baloney, but got down and serious pretty quickly. Not much football played, more about the players and the business.
February 5, 2011
Alaine B
Watch this movie...it will change your outlook on football. Adapted from a book by a former Dallas Cowboy's player.
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