Lightwizard wrote:"North Dallas Forty" with Nick Nolte is the finest movie on football ever made -- nobody has exceeded it's fine script and Nolte delivers a performance-of-a-lifetime.
like Wiz said North Dallas Forty;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dallas_Forty
The simple scene when Nick Nolte awakens after a tough game would be recognizable for anybody who has played the game at the college or pro level, sometimes you just feel like you're gonna' die when you wake up and every bone in your body screams out, then that's when you start reaching for the pills and needles.
Brain's Song too, but as a TV movie it did not have the impact of theater released films but I would bet lunch money not even a Dick Butkus would have a dry eye when it ended.
But as an old football coach, nothing tops Remember The Titans, it brings out so much of what the game does to mature a young man and the dipicts well the pure joy of playing the game. The speech made at dawn on the battlefield at Gettysburg was worth the ticket of admission.
Only Hoosiers is a better sports film. It is one of my top ten
"Americana movies, on par with Twelve Angry Men, Grapes of Wrath, Singing in the Rain, Its a Wonderful Life, and To Kill a Mockingbird for exemplifying the mythos of an America fast slipping through our fingers as we rush on headlong to the future. The whole film is a cinematic banquet and the opening scene with Gene Hackman driving through the rural fields and towns of the American Midwest in late fall with the scenery, all those colors of foliage makes one weep in remembrance of things past we have known. I watched it over Thanksgiving and still get a chill when Jimmy Chitewood looks to Coach Dale and says. 'I'll make it."
If you have spent time coaching young men you know just what went through Coach Dale's heart at that moment when the trust they had in you was given back to them.
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