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Gridiron Gang
Movie Stats & Links |
| Starring: |
The Rock, Xzibit,
Jade Yorker, Setu Taase, Leon Rippy, Kevin Dunn |
| MPAA Rated: |
PG-13 |
| Released By: |
Columbia Pictures |
| Web Site: |
www.gridirongang-movie.com |
| Kiddie Movie: |
There's shooting
and gang stuff. Leave them at home. |
| Date Movie: |
Only if she loves
The Rock, or a decent movie about reforming criminals. |
| Gratuitous Sex: |
Talk. |
| Gratuitous
Violence: |
There are some
shootings. |
| Action: |
The football
games. |
| Laughs: |
There are a couple
of chuckles. |
| Memorable
Scene: |
Any of the
shooting scenes. |
| Memorable
Quote: |
It had to deal
with the Camp Kilpatrick team being able to play in the
playoffs, but I think it was something like "What if we
could?" |
| Directed By: |
Phil Joanou |
| Produced By: |
Neal H. Moritz,
Lee Stanley |
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Gridiron Gang
A Movie Review |
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The folks in Hollywood couldn’t ask for an easier story
to tell, that being the story of Sean Porter and Malcolm
Moore starting a football team in a youth juvenile center,
and for Hollywood, the story was already written in the
likes of a documentary about Camp Kilpatrick, in California,
where bad kids end up, and some of them ending up not so bad
after they learn to be a part of a football team. I will
admit that I don’t nearly have the initiative to find out if
the movie "Gridiron Gang" takes any liberties with the true
story, but let’s just get to the story in the movie…
The Rock plays Sean Porter (I’m going to call him The
Rock from now on, instead of Dwayne Johnson, because I read
that he got the name right’s back from Vince McMahon, but
I’m sorry, I digress). In any case, at Camp Kilpatrick, a
juvenile center in California, it’s mostly filled with gang
members, or just all-around bad dudes who have lost
direction, and Sean begins to see that as much as he tries
to rehabilitate them the status-quo way, for the most part
once the kids get back on the street they either die,
end up back at juvie, or end up in the big pokey because
they aren’t teens anymore. He and his other "Camp
Counselor," Malcolm (Xzibit), decide that what these kids
really need is learning, like football-team learning, and so
we get introduced to a bunch of the dudes at the Camp for a
variety of reasons. At the top of the list for reforming, at
least in the eye of Sean, is Willie Weathers (Jade Yorker),
and so Sean gets boys at the camp to actually join the team,
then Sean figures out a way to get the team into an actual
football league in the area, and then Sean actually gets the
kids to learn how to win, how to lose, and how to be better
people so that they don’t end up being back on the streets
as losers, on a path to die.
The story is simple in its direction, taking a bunch of
troubled teens on the path to ruin and changing their
stories into lives of being productive, but I will give you
this, "Gridiron Gang" doesn’t sugar-coat the worlds these
teens come from, nor how they end up at Camp Kilpatrick.
Sadly, most of it deals with the land of gangs and guns, and
for some of Sean Porter’s players, some of them do go back
to the ways of gangs and guns, but the uplifting side of the
movie is that for a better majority had there not been a
football team, they see a different side of life, that life
might be better lived than on a road of turmoil.
The thing that really works in this movie is that it is
cast nearly perfectly, starting with The Rock as Sean
Porter. All he wants to do is maybe save one kid from ending
up back on the bad path, and he found a way to help many
more. The Rock comes off great as the man who needs to be a
hard-ass, then learns for himself that at times these kids
are just kids, and even though they might be at the Camp for
shooting someone, they still need to be treated like a kid,
because that is the only way they will learn. Those cast for
the football team are great, the Camp superiors, Paul (Leon
Rippy) and Ted (Kevin Dunn), are fantastic as going from
totally skeptical to totally seeing that Sean Porter is
making a difference, and even the sad, mother dying
storyline sort of worked.
And yet, as much as I was liking "Gridiron Gang," I
thought it was really, for whatever reason, about 15 to 20
minutes too long. Some scenes dragged a bit, especially some
of the football game scenes, and the film folks seemed to
try to get too "slow-motion" dramatic because that is what
they thought the football scenes should look like. Look, we
get it, it’s a football game, just show it.
Anyway, the story is a great one, but I don’t think it
warrants a full-price ticket, even if The Rock is great in
his role. It’s 3 ½ stars out of 5 for "Gridiron Gang" from
me, and I would highly recommend it for a matinee or a solid
DVD rental.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!!
L8R!!! |
