I am not much of a sports guy, and as a result, I can’t say I have gone out of my way to watch a lot of sports-related movies. Let’s face it: many of them are formulaic, and the better ones in my opinion are as good as they are because of the lead actor’s performance. That said, that could very well describe a whole lot of movies that have absolutely nothing to do with sports. A good lead performance can elevate a formulaic movie, and the “underdog goes to the big game” formula is an old one. It can still be done well, and sometimes the big thing the movie is trying to say has to do with whether or not the underdog teams wins in the end. Heck, I remember the football sports comedy The Replacements, where a bunch of unsigned players crossed a picket line to play pro football until the contract dispute for the regular players is resolved, where the “big game” wasn’t a championship but just their last regular season game the temporary team would get to play at the end of their short-lived football careers.
Say, Gene Hackman played the coach in The Replacements and what I ended up watching last night, namely the basketball classic Hoosiers, also had him as the head coach. And I didn’t intend the opening anecdote to get here when I started it. That somehow just happened.
It’s 1951, and the Hickory, Indiana High School basketball team has a new coach in the form of Norman Dale (Hackman). He’s new to town, and his past and ways are a bit of a mystery, but the thing is, people really care about basketball in this town, save Dale’s co-worker and fellow teacher Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey). She may have a point. Dale does love the game and all, but this is a town that lives and dies on its high school basketball team, to the point Dale finds himself grilled on zone vs man-to-man defense by a lot of middle-aged to older men at the town barbershop his first night in town. Dale is polite but a bit evasive. He used to coach at the college level, and he has his own way of doing things. Really, all people want to know is if star player Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis) will be coming back after he gave up playing due to the death of the previous coach.
That said, Dale’s ways of doing things are his own. The first thing he does is banish one of the barbershop guys who volunteered himself as the assistant coach and started practice before Dale got there. From there, he kicks one player off his already small squad for rudeness and banishes the nosy townsfolks who just want to interfere with his way of doing things, one that largely comes down to focusing on fundamentals and doing what he says at all times. His ways don’t lead to a lot of early victories or flashy play. Dale’s ways do get him support from the team, eventually, and Myra appreciates that he doesn’t try to talk Jimmy into returning while local drunk and former player Shooter Flatch (Dennis Hopper) gets a chance to redeem himself as an assistant coach. How far can Dale take this team?
As I said in the opening paragraph, this is a sports movie that follows a certain formula. The Hickory team only has about seven or eight players, and their opponents are often bigger, more experienced teams. Dale has a temper, but he’s also a man of some wisdom as seen in how he wins over Myra. Dale does seem to understand what Myra is about, that there should be more to life than high school basketball in a single small town, and the way he doesn’t push Jimmy to rejoin the team is proof of that. The problem is more that the rest of the town wants to win and wants to win NOW. Since Dale does things differently, he’s naturally going to need to win over more than just his own team. Plus, I think it’s noteworthy that one of the first people to burst into the locker room after a disappointing first half for Dale’s first game is the town sheriff. It’s an authority figure after all.
It helps also that the basketball scenes actually are well-shot and suspenseful. I was legitimately wondering towards the end if this would be the sort of movie that would let the team lose the final game but still feel like winners, such as in the original Rocky. Yes, it is the inspirational sort of movie, but ending with a loss wasn’t out the question for me. All I will say is the ending felt earned no matter what happened, and like the best sports movies, brought that feeling of triumph to the team that felt deserved as Hackman’s Dale guided them to a level they’d never known. Sports movies aren’t my favorite genre, but this one did make for a good time.
Grade: A-
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