Samuel L. Jackson

  • Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)

    Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) As a vocal opponent of torture films, gory violence and cinematic nihilism, I do have a softer spot than many would expect about the Saw series. While I don’t have much use for its elaborate traps or sudden sprays of bodily parts, I rather liked some of its more outrageous narrative twists, grimy industrial settings, go-for-broke editing (especially when it’s trying to cover up some plot nonsense) and moralistic intentions—even when it doesn’t stick to it. This being said, I wasn’t begging for another instalment: Considering Tobin Bell’s inimitable performance and the convoluted backflips of the narrative after nine instalments, the series can rest easy for a long while. Spiral wisely doesn’t try to fit even more material in the series’ overstuffed mythology—it plainly goes for an explicit spinoff, and adopts a slightly different tone by moulding itself into a police thriller. Chris Rock, of all possible choices, gamely tries to reinvent himself as a more serious dramatic actor by playing an outcast police officer who becomes the focus of a copycat killer working in Jigsaw’s tradition. Much of the film, from a narrative perspective, plays like one of those 1990s serial killer thriller, with the police racing to find the culprit. The distinction here is that the killer is targeting corrupt cops—alas, a concept that seems too timid now that everyone is grappling with the consequence of systemic police brutality. The result is something like a new direction for the series, but one that doesn’t manage to get very far in establishing itself as something worth pursuing. Sure, it’s interesting to see Rock (his face sculpted by age and facial hair) go for thrills and drama while still spouting his fair share of one-liners. Oh yes, Samuel L. Jackson does have something new to do here. Fine, the police procedural is a nice change of pace. Indeed, there’s a narrative twist worthy of the Saw series. But none of this is quite enough. The fascination for the traps is overdone and underwhelming: the film could have dispensed with them without problem, especially considering how insipid they become over time. (Worse: the film tries to have its cake and eat it too by allowing the victims to defeat the trap… only for them to die gruesomely anyway moments later. But this is far from the first instance of botched morality in the series.)  It’s all loud and quick on the editing, but the substance is just as lacking as in earlier repetitive instalments of the series. I’m not sure if Spiral will ever get a sequel, but I don’t think anyone will demand it.

  • Juice (1992)

    Juice (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2020) The early 1990s were a great period for black crime dramas featuring teenagers stuck in proto-criminal lifestyles, and Juice is another fine example of the form. Set in New York City rather than the more common Los Angeles, it follows four young men as their lives become more dangerous than they expected. Petty shoplifting eventually leads to death, and it takes a lot to break out of the cycle. What sets Juice apart, at least for me, is the quality of the turntablism rap soundtrack. The other highlight is the cast – one of Tupac Shakur’s only roles is here, as well as early supporting turns for Queen Latifah and Samuel L. Jackson. Otherwise, the film does feel like many of its similar contemporaries – which is not a bad thing considering that I rather like the genre, but it might have been a good idea to space out its viewing a little bit farther away from previous similar movies.

  • Kiss of Death (1995)

    Kiss of Death (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) The first thing anyone will notice about Kiss of Death is—holy moly, what a good cast of actors: David Caruso (back when he thought TV stardom led to a cinema career), Samuel L. Jackson (looking young!), Nicolas Cage (as a crime lord!), Helen Hunt, Stanley Tucci (with some hair!), Michael Rapaport, Ving Rhames… I mean, that’s interesting. The second thing one notices after the credits is—wow, this was a completely unremarkable crime thriller. Directed in solid but unspectacular fashion by Barbet Schroeder, it’s an update to the 1947 film noir classic that transposes the story in the 1990s, but doesn’t really do anything all that exceptional with it all. It’s not uninteresting—at the very least, you can say that it’s watchable without trouble. But it’s not anything more: moments where the film is overwrought (thank you, Nicolas Cage) almost give a glimpse into what this Kiss of Death could have been with more verve from everyone. In its current state, though, it’s having a really hard time distinguishing itself from the middle of the pack of 1990s crime thrillers: admittedly a good decade for those, but not an excuse for a film that doesn’t quite reach its objectives.

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, July 2021) I know, I know – it makes absolutely no sense that I would see Kiss of Death for a second time in a year when there are far, far better movies that I have either not seen or seen only once. But as seasoned reviewers will tell you: no movies are as hard to review as the indifferent ones. You can be eloquent about the great or good movies; you can be acerbic about the bad or the terrible ones, but those movies firmly in the middle? Good luck even remembering them. So it is that I decided to have a second go at the 1995 version Kiss of Death, largely because I’d just seen the original 1947 one, and there was the remake playing again right now. Alas, I don’t have much to report – the remake is just as featureless and forgettable as the first time. The casting remains interesting, what with David Caruso, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Helen Hunt, Ving Rhames, and Stanley Tucci (in the awkward balding phase of his career). And while the cast slightly elevates the material (with particular mention to Nicholas Cage, who’s given the unenviable task of measuring up to Richard Widmark’s iconic performance in the original film) it’s really not enough to distinguish what remains a somewhat humdrum mid-1990s thriller. I can understand the desire to strike a mark away from the original noir classic, but in setting out to do its own thing and update the material, this remake forgoes the psychotic vileness of the antagonist, the strong atmospheric cinematography and the impending feeling of doom for the protagonist. (The happy-ish ending is not a surprise like it was in the original, but par for the course of such thrillers.) What we’re left is largely undistinguishable from so many other thrillers of the time, executed with mere competence but no real flair. I’m reasonably confident that I’m going to forget nearly everything about this remake within days, so you may get a third viewing in the next few months.

  • Glass (2019)

    Glass (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Movie reviewers have been saying for decades that you can never know what to expect from writer/direct M. Night Shyamalan, but that statement circa-2019 means something very different than what it did back in the early-2000s. It was about plot twists back then, but it’s about overall film quality right now: While Shyamalan’s work is now generally better than his 2002–2014 nosedive, his last few movies have been sharply uneven even within themselves, with his clever direction often fighting against his own exasperating writing. Glass is the latest case study—a disappointing third entry in a trilogy that should have been left as two disconnected first instalments. Here the main characters of Unbreakable and Split are brought together by shadowy operatives trying to prove that they’re mistaken about thinking of themselves as super-powered. The good news, I suppose, is that Shyamalan’s direction is usually effective, that Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and James McAvoy deliver good performances, and that the first hour of the film has its moments even if it appears to be wasting everyone’s time by trying to prove that a superhero film isn’t about superheroes. By trying to ground itself in psychological thrills, Glass almost becomes a bore until it gets down to business. Then the last third of the film starts and viewers must buckle down for a climax that throws away three films’ worth of built-up credibility. Not only does Shyamalan make sure to double underline every belated clever idea he may have had about comic books (perhaps he hasn’t noticed that, in the meantime, nearly everyone in the entire moviegoing universe has become a comic-book expert), he squanders away a lot of goodwill (for instance by killing a major character by drowning him in a puddle) and concludes on a self-satisfied note that will feel jejune to many viewers. Glass does have a few good ideas, but the way it gets at them is either wasteful or ineffective. Sarah Paulson holds her own against the established actors of the series, but the biggest problem here is once again Shyamalan-the-writer undermining anything that Shyamalan-the-director can do. Frankly, Glass isn’t nearly as innovative as it thinks in bringing back superheroes in the real world through psychobabble, skepticism, and dull colours: there are several handfuls of other movies having attempted the same since Unbreakable, and often in a way that doesn’t have viewers feeling as if they’re the chumps.

  • Sydney aka Hard Eight (1996)

    Sydney aka Hard Eight (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) I can’t say I’m a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s entire filmography, but a look at his first feature film reveals something far more conventionally enjoyable than his later, more ambitious but also more esoteric efforts. Hard Eight is a straight-ahead neo-noir, taking place in the demimonde of professional gamblers and small-time criminals. Here we have an elder gambling pro with a shady past (Philip Baker Hall, a bit of a revelation in a leading role), taking a younger, definitely dumber man (John C. Reilley, not really breaking out of his screen persona) under his wing. Things spin a bit out of control when the younger man gets enamoured of a cocktail waitress/prostitute (Gwyneth Paltrow, back when she deigned take on such roles), and a dangerous crook (Samuel L. Jackson, up to his usual standards) realizes he knows a secret. It’s not much of a plot (and one key element is far too much of a coincidence to be explained away), but Hard Eight plays it with restrained focus, leaving the spotlight for the actors to deliver understated work. The lean and mean crime plotting means that the film doesn’t try to bite off more than it can chew, and the entire result feels accomplished. Frankly, I liked it better than many of Anderson’s more acclaimed films … and I find it interesting how many of today’s leading filmmakers emerged in the mid-nineties by doing neo-noir (see Following and Seven).

  • Captain Marvel (2019)

    Captain Marvel (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In Theaters, March 2019) At this stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe business model, we’re all converts to the Marvel episodic paradigm—to the point where I will reliably show up to theatres despite the inconvenience, just to be ready for the next Big Episode in the series. As a result, the episodic effect also helps weaker episodes in attracting people in theatres. Captain Marvel, compared to other MCU films, is just about average—it’s nicely made without being exceptional at this stage of the series, providing just enough unpredictability to keep things interesting. There are a number of subverted assumptions here: our origin story drops us in media res, with an alien discovering that she’s really human rather than the usual other way around. Even for comic book fans, there are surprises: The Skrull shapeshifting menace is dealt with expeditiously (this time around, at least). Even for the MCU, there’s a bit of a surprise in how the film is set in the nineties, featuring characters in their younger selves (that digital de-aging effect for Samuel L. Jackson is occasionally eerie, but soon becomes unnoticeable) and plugging jokes directly in the mythology of the series so far. (The explanation for Fury losing an eye was a let-down, though.)  Much has been said about this being the first Marvel film to star a female character (they all forgot about Elektra, but that’s fine: everyone including the cast and crew of Elektra have forgotten about Elektra) and the film does make use of a slightly different kind of super-heroism without beating it senseless — Brie Larson’s not bad, but a bit bland: Lashana Lynch is more interesting. Captain Marvel’s clearly defined three acts are variably interesting: the opening segment is too focused on cosmic elements and hazy direction to be fully engaging, but things pick up once we’re back crashing on circa-nineties Earth through the roof of a Blockbuster.   (I’m now old enough that “my” nineties nostalgia is now a thing, and I’m not as horrified by that as I had imagined.)  The third act begins once everyone’s back into space and it doesn’t quite fully realize its promise despite coming a fair way along. I fully expect Goose to be a supporting character in a future MCU film. More than that, though, I do expect to be there, in theatres, whenever the next MCU episode comes rolling along.

  • Le violon rouge [The Red Violin] (1998)

    Le violon rouge [The Red Violin] (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2018) As someone who like cinematic form experimentation, there’s no way I wasn’t going to be interested in Le Violon Rouge, a Canadian film tacking not a single character, but a single object through centuries. Here, the story begins in the late seventeenth century, as a grieving violin-maker coats a new violin with a substance of particular meaning. From that dramatic starting point, we follow the violin through Vienna (1793), Oxford (1890s), Shanghai (1960s) and Montréal (1997) as the violin changes hands, creates passions and undergoes surprising changes in fate. As a concept, it’s quite lovely—there are a lot of novels of the sort (or close to it—see the bibliography of James A. Michener and Edward Rutherfurd) but for obvious reasons it’s a much harder form to do as a film—juggling several time periods is a nightmare in itself, not to mention the added production costs. As a result, I can’t help but compare the potential of Le violon rouge with its execution and being slightly disappointed—more time periods, stronger dramatic ironies, perhaps a longer running time in the form of a miniseries could have done the best justice to the idea. Still, what we do have with the finished film in 131 minutes isn’t negligible—the editing hopping back and forth between 1997 Montréal and earlier time period is admirable enough, but writer/director François Girard’s juggling of a large cast of character and five separate languages is an amazing feat in itself. Samuel L. Jackson, Colm Feore, Sandra Oh, French-Canadian cinema fixture Remy Girard and none other than Canadian director Don McKellar (who also co-wrote the film) are only some of the names in the ensemble cast. While Le violon rouge does have flaws, it’s also quite an interesting experiment in cinema itself and does warrant a look if that’s the kind of thing that interests you.

  • The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)

    The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2018) You’d be forgiven for thinking that The Hitman’s Bodyguard would end up being another one of those run-of-the-mill action/comedy hybrids, with decent but not overwhelming amounts of both and a tendency to aim for the middle in a bid to make sure that the comedy crowd doesn’t get too disturbed along the way. But within moments, it becomes obvious that this film is going to play the action angle as hard as it can, showcasing a far bloodier kind of violence than is the norm for these movies. The action is a bit more elaborate and frantic, and the body count is definitely higher to the point of settling for a very dark kind of comedy. (Behind the scenes, much is explained by the fact that the film had its origin as an action drama, with the comedy added after casting was finalized.) Fortunately, in other ways, The Hitman’s Bodyguard does play it safer: by featuring Ryan Reynolds as the bodyguard and Samuel L. Jackson at the hitman, the film can rely on both actors’ established screen personas, Reynolds quipping like the best of them while Jackson curses up enough of a storm to be commented upon by his partner. Their back-and-forth is as good as these things usually get. Salma Hayek also brings a bit of expected spice as a fiery character cheerfully playing into her own persona and cultural heritage—it’s familiar, even stereotypical stuff, but it certainly works. I also liked Élodie Yung, but that’s because I like Élodie Yung in general—her character is a bit blander than the others, perhaps because the film’s overstuffed with strong personalities as it is. And that goes for the film as well—while it would have been a bit better without so much bloodshed, the result is surprisingly engaging, even in the middle of yet another car chase and familiar banter. Amsterdam makes for a fun backdrop, the action is furious, the comedy works and the actors deliver what they’re hired for. I don’t think that The Hitman’s Bodyguard will have much of a long shelf-life (although a sequel is coming, so that’s that), but it’s an entertaining enough diversion—although, once again, I could have used a bit less blood along the way.

  • Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

    Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On DVD, April 2017) I first saw Die Hard with a Vengeance on opening day, and I’m pretty sure I saw it again on DVD ten or fifteen years ago. But I can’t find a mention of it on this site, so here we go: I really, really like the first two-third of this film. It open on the iconic “Summer in the City” soundtrack of a bustling mid-nineties Manhattan before starting to blow stuff up. Then it’s a wild ride through the city, accumulating brain-teasers, going through cheeky overdone action sequences and letting Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson do what they do best. John McTiernan’s direction is exceptionally good and there’s a sense of fun, joy and movement to the story. Every cinephile imprints on the movies of younger years, and mid-to-late nineties action cinema is the standard against which I will forever measure others. Die Hard With a Vengeance’s first two acts is good, solid, highly enjoyable moviemaking. I like it a lot, and I had forgotten just enough details about the movie to be charmed all over again. It’s also a beautiful wide-screen homage to New York City in its multiplicities of glories. Then … the film leaves Manhattan and loses quite a bit of steam. While the script is always big on coincidences, they get actively outrageous by the time our two main characters meet again upstate. By the time we’re on a boat, the film settles down to a far more conventional beat, and the tacked-on ending at the border feels more superfluous than anything else. Still, two-third of a great movie followed by a third of an okay one is better than the average. Contemporary viewers will notice that both Trump and Clinton are name-checked (the latter as a likely “forty third president”), and that a few moments eerily echo the events of 9/11.

  • Pulp Fiction (1994)

    Pulp Fiction (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, March 2017) The trouble with re-watching classics is the tension of judging whether it’s still a classic. I first saw Pulp Fiction, like every twentysomething at the time, in the mid-nineties on VHS—a good friend had brought it home and took delight in seeing me react to specific moments in the movie, whether it was the infamous watch speech or the “Garçon!” time-fixing moment. I filed away Pulp Fiction as a great movie and didn’t think about it. Now that I’m consciously re-watching big hits of the nineties, though, the question was: Did Pulp Fiction hold up, once past more than twenty years of imitators, Tarantino’s evolution and popularization of what (non-linear storytelling, witty dialogues, etc.) made it so special back then? What I clearly had forgotten about the movie was how long it was—at more than two hours and a half, the film is a daunting prospect, and the non-linear structure means that there’s almost an entire unexpected act added to a normal running time. Pulp Fiction, admittedly, doesn’t have the impact of surprise: Tarantino’s shtick is a known quantity by now, and seeing his characters go off on lengthy tangents isn’t surprising, nor seeing full sequences play in nearly real-time. The fractured chronology is still effective—I guarantee that even twenty years later, you will remember a lot of the film’s individual highlights … but not necessarily in which order they’re placed. I had near-verbatim recall of much of the John Travolta storyline, quite a bit of Bruce Willis’s segment (how could I forget the taxi driver, though?) but not much of Samuel L Jackson’s act. Fortunately, the dialogue still works, the dark comedy still feels solid, the cinematic flourishes (from “square” to the dance sequence to Harvey Keitel) still work very well and the movie still impresses by the mastery of its execution. It’s daring, sure, but it’s more importantly put together nearly flawlessly. Pulp Fiction has been endlessly imitated over the years, but it remains a solid best-of-class representation of its own subgenre. It’s well worth a revisit, especially if it’s been a while and yet you’re sure you remember most of it.

  • The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

    The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2017) Count me as slightly surprised by this two-fisted adventure film. Most reviewers haven’t been kind to The Legend of Tarzan, and their lowering of my expectations surely played into the film’s favour. Once past the prologue and some tiresome rehashing of the classic Tarzan myth, The Legend of Tarzan gets its own identity as an anti-colonialist sequel to the original Burrough. As Tarzan returns to Africa to fight against slavers, the film becomes the straight-up adventure that it should be. Alexander Skarsgård (and his CGI double) is pretty good as the titular hero, Margot Robbie is fine (but no more) as a damsel able to fight her way out of distress, Samuel L. Jackson is dependably enjoyable as an action sidekick and Christoph Waltz is also up to his usual standards as a slimy antagonist. Director David Yates uses his experience helming visual-effects-heavy projects to deliver a swooping, dynamic series of action sequences grounded in the real world: the film reaches its apex by the time Tarzan flies through the jungle. The script isn’t too bad—despite some uninspiring lines, the anti-colonial themes are ambitious and nicely serve the character despite some white-saviour qualms. The Legend of Tarzan doesn’t amount to a remarkable movie, but it does make up most of a decent blockbuster entertainment film. It’s quite a bit better than some of the harshest reviews may suggest, and works just fine at what it wants to be.

  • Big Game (2014)

    Big Game (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2016) Now here is a pleasant surprise: an honest big-budget slam-bang action thriller featuring iconic images about the American Presidency, coming from… Finland. What? Well, yes. Thanks to the magic of special effects, global financing, location shooting and well-paid actors, even Finland is able to put together the kind of movie that Hollywood wishes it could make. Big Game’s premise is absurdly simple (Air Force One is sabotaged and brought down deep in Finland’s forests—only a boy can help the President escape his pursuers) but it works, largely because writer/director Jalmari Helander is willing to go big and bold on his images and action sequences. It does help that the film can rely on Samuel L. Jackson as a curiously cowardly president, and Jim Broadbent as an oracle of truth with a hidden agenda (his last scene is fantastic). But when the film shows Air Force One crashing into a lake, or being ripped apart by its auto-destruction mechanism, or the President running in the woods like hunted prey, or a heliborne freezer slamming through a forest, this is the kind of action movie iconography that Hollywood has unexplainably abandoned lately. No wonder if Big Game works so splendidly well once it firmly engages into its first act: It plays the action movie Hollywood game better than Hollywood itself, and keeps piling up the cool stuff. It’s unabashedly a thriller and it doesn’t try to be anything else. As such, it’s a success … and it’s too bad that a lot of American filmgoers won’t even hear of it.

  • The Hateful Eight (2015)

    The Hateful Eight (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2016) As a confirmed Quentin Tarantino fan, I was expecting The Hateful Eight with a bit of cinephile glee, curious to see what he had in mind. After all, each of his movie is usually an event, doing thing with cinema that other filmmakers usually don’t try. His newest offering makes the unusual bet to transform itself in practically a theatre piece by putting eight characters in a snowbound lodge. The suspense is notable, as most of these characters have backstories and plenty of secrets to reveal in the film’s lengthy running time. By the end, the film becomes graphically violent as tensions erupt in all-out shootouts, poisoning and hanging. The dialogues are good and the performances terrific (with particular applause for Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh), with some assured direction from Tarantino. And yet, and yet… The Hateful Eight doesn’t quite amount to something as good as it could have been. For all of the dialogue’s deliciousness, the film does feel overlong and far too busy for its own good. As the complex plotting and counterplotting accumulates, it’s easy to disengage from the experience of the film. The conclusion is also particularly grim, which doesn’t help. As a result, it feels less interesting than (say) Django Unchained and not quite as meaningful either. Still, even a lesser Tarantino film can feel far more fascinating than other films by more pedestrian authors, so let’s count our blessings that the film exists and wait for Tarantino to come up with something new.

  • A Time to Kill (1996)

    A Time to Kill (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2016) There was a time, before the McConnaissance, before the Decade of Rom-Coms, when Matthew McConaughey was hailed as a promising young actor, and A Time to Kill (alongside Contact, Amistad and Lone Star) was part of the evidence. Watching it today is like unearthing vintage McConaughey, made even better by the calibre of the cast surrounding him. Samuel L. Jackson in a genuinely unsettling angry father role? Kevin Spacey as a slimy prosecutor? Sandra Bullock as the brilliant girl who comes to save the day? Ashley Judd, Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper as part of the scenery? Not bad at all. While director Joel Schumacher lets the film run long, he knows what he’s doing in giving it a sweaty high-polish gloss. (Do I need to highlight once more the disappearance of the big-budget standalone thriller in today’s Hollywood industry?) The story is adapted reasonably faithfully from the John Grisham novel, including the uncomfortable considerations of vigilantism. In fact, the movie may be a bit more upsetting in the way it squarely places its sympathies with the justice-seeker and conflating it with a victory for the oppressed (as in; racists are bad, so they get what they deserve and never mind the judicial process.) There’s unpleasant stuff going just under the glossy surface of the story, and it’s not clear whether this is entirely intentional from either Grisham or the screenwriter. Still, A Time to Kill can coast a long time on the charm and persona of its stars. In the end, it’s a film best seen for its cast and execution than for moral questions left untouched.

  • Coach Carter (2005)

    Coach Carter (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2015) As much as I don’t respond eagerly to sports movies, and as much as I don’t feel immediately compelled by tales of black teenagers working themselves out of the ghetto, I have to admit that the savvy blend of sport underdog drama and troubled-youth theatrics in Coach Carter seems made for success.  As a bonus, Samuel L. Jackson gets one of his most Samuel L. Jackson-esque role here as the titular coach, using harsh methods to teach disaffected teenagers some work ethics and life skills.  Mechanically put together and almost entirely unburdened by surprises, Coach Carter does offer a few highlights even if it takes almost forever in the film for Carter to become an actual protagonist with obstacles to overcome.  Much of the sub-plots surrounding the core story are familiar and make the film longer than it should be, although Ashanti turns in a fine performance and Channing Tatum can be seen in an early role.  Still, it’s Jackson who elevates the material, providing a credible figurehead through which the tough-love message of the film can echo.  While kids may like the film because of the unlikely victories, parents will love the sugar-coated message about the value of work and discipline.  As with most other sports movies, this is an aspiration story of moral values played on a field –designed for maximum appeal.