When the Game Stands Tall

This movie was pretty decent, not the best film about football (Remember the Titans is much better) but not the worst movie I've seen this summer.
De La Salle is a Catholic High School in Concord California. And yes, they do recruit students from around the area because the program is so beloved, probably bending the rules about scholarships. After all, when the film starts, they have won every single game for the last twelve years. That year (2003) they win their twelfth straight state championship, but trouble is brewing. The juniors are not as close knit as the graduating seniors are. And then the beloved coach, Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) has a heart attack which devastates his eldest son, Danny (Matthew Daddario) who just wants some sort of attention from his father.
And then, they lose the first game of the next season (2004). Forgive me if I don't feel too bad for you guys. This is the girl who went to a high school where the football team was horrible. Out the forty games I attended throughout my high school marching band career, we won just seven of them. Losing humanizes you. But it devastates the team, all of them shed tears afterwards as though their whole lives are ruined. You can't always win and I was glad that a team from Washington state was finally able to stop them.
They lose the next game as well and Coach decides that something must change. The two key players have issues. Tayshon (Jessie Usher) is cocky and extremely full of himself. He cares only about himself and hasn't learned to care about the team first. Chris Ryan (Alexander Ludwig from The Hunger Games) is a senior going for the state record of most touchdowns but his father, Mickey (Clancy Brown) is cruel and cares only about the record and when his son fails him, he becomes abusive. Fortunately, Coach takes the team to hospital for veterans which teaches them some valuable lessons and they manage to win the next game playing against intense heat and a team with more than three times the players. And the victories continue until they return to the state championship which the tone sort of switches as the last game focuses on whether Chris will get his record or not. In the end, he chooses not to get that last touchdown. The team will still win regardless and he loves the team more than his father. They are a team. Another state championship for a school who may have the talent and the heart but I always root for the underdog and De La Salle is never the underdog.
The film should be about more than just football and it sort of hints at that. Like when Terrence Kelly, a great player heading off to Oregon but is shot and killed just before he can leave in a shooting that I feel was a set-up. And it should focus slightly more of Bob's relationship with his wife, Bev (Laura Dern). After his heart attack (the man's a smoker, yikes, but I guess he quits after he nearly dies), he apologizes and calls himself a liar. He preaches to the boys about being better men and be devoted to their families while he ignores his family in favor of the team. He tries to devote more time, and at first, its easy because he hasn't been cleared for duty. Who knows what happens after he returns to coaching full time.
Though the film is all over the place and it misses leading the viewer to something special, the film is not a waste of time, not really. It is nice seeing characters grow up and change right before your eyes and it is nice when they put the team before themselves, but can these guys really be as good as they seem? Still, the acting is decent but it makes me long for the fantastic TV series Friday Night Lights. That show managed to create real characters with flaws and issues. They are not always nice and squeaky clean and at times, they are even the underdogs. Still, despite all these issues, it does tell a great story but I feel that this film would have worked better as a made-for-TV film because it is much more of a feel good film than anything else. Grade: B