Probably the Best Football Movie!
One of the more interesting football movies that deals with just more than the game. Great performaces and memorable lines help it go the extra yard in comparison to other football flicks.
"Look here, a deli meat!"
I love this movie also and I think it's a real horse race as to whether this or THE LONGEST YARD is the best football movie. I do love this movie and think Nick Nolte gives one of his strongest performances and Mac Davis just shines in the best performance of his brief film career.
shareSPOILERS
"The Longest Yard" owes perhaps as much to the prison movie and the "Dirty Dozen" rebel team movie as the football movie, though the final game was certainly a lotta football.
Still, I think that "North Dallas Forty" is the definitive take on the NFL -- and also works as an analogy to the American capitalistic workplace in general.
There aren't really all that many pro football movies, anyway. "Paper Lion"? "Number One?" "Semi-Tough"? (more a comedy on trendy fads than football) "On Any Sunday"? (20 years after "North Dallas," and thus a bit influenced by it.) "Brian's Song"? (A TV movie and mainly a true-life tearjerker.)
"North Dallas Forty" beats all of those, I think, because it carefully mixes the funny, the glorious, the painful and the horrific of the game, all in one glossy little package that turns out to mean something rather sad and profound at the end.
Like Burt Reynolds, Nick Nolte actually played some college ball and actually looks like he could play for the NFL (Adam Sandler, get outta here.) This movie came out when Nolte was hot from "Rich Man, Poor Man" and "The Deep" and really allowed him to show the actor beneath the handsomely then-boyish blond with the big body and the gravelly voice.
Nolte was paired with Mac Davis, doing a bit modelled on Dandy Don Meredith and surprising everybody with both the charisma and the depth of his performance. Unfortunately, Mac couldn't keep it going in movies, but I remember one night in the late 80's on "The Tonight Show": Siskel and Ebert were guests on the couch as Mac came out, and they immediately broke in to his interview with Johnny Carson to tell Mac how great he was in "North Dallas Forty" all those years before. Davis looked touched.
Mac's QB is carefully developed as a guy who really likes Nolte's integrity and rebel spirit -- but only so far, and only as long as it doesn't get Mac in trouble professionally. Mac also allows for the bullying tactics of his giant linemen by telling receiver Nolte: "You keep me on the sports pages, but they keep me OFF the obituary pages."
"North Dallas Forty", coming in 1979, is literally among the last of the "seventies movies." The theme is individuality vs. the uncaring corporate machine -- and the ending is a downer, maybe. Nolte is fired (how few movies understand that this is like death to most people.) He has hope for freedom in the future, but he's hurt, he's losing financial standing, and he knows he's leaving a game he truly loved.
One of the best scenes in "North Dallas Forty" comes early, at a disco-charged dance party where the hard-working NFL beefcakes are plied with beautiful women. One of them is just a guest who doesn't want to put out, but Bo Svenson's giant mauler of a linesman grabs at her like she's an offered appetizer. Nolte watches and tries to stay out of it, but figures he's got to interfere. Bad idea. Bo grabs Nolte by the throat, almost as an animalistic afterthought -- and actor Nolte's face turns beet red like he's really choking (I guess Nolte really held his breath.) Dandy Mac Davis breaks it up just in time, but the message is clear: in the NFL, brute force DOES rule.
But brute force is never as powerful as corporate force. Its the team owners who make or break careers or lives. They can reduce giant men into tossed-away gears in the machine. As Nolte says of the owners: "We're not the team. THEY'RE the team. We're the equipment."
The workplace analogies are fierce and start early. Everybody laughs at the game film of a middle-aged player screwing up a play. He laughs...a little. But he's scared, he's ashamed...and he's fired. Thus is the stage set. Nolte is reminded by his vicious owner-boss Dabney Coleman that a nice younger receiver is being tried out right behind him, that he gets paid a lot more to play ball than he could get for doing anything else, and that the Canadian league beckons as Nolte's first step down the ladder: "You know French?" Nolte quietly retaliates against his boss by screwing his fiance -- and when the boss finds out (via a private eyef who's investigating all aspects of Nolte's life, drugs and all), well, power raises its ugly head.
"North Dallas Forty" is sexy and funny and exciting as it moves along -- Mac's jacuzzi speech about his recent sexual exploits ("Wait'll you hear the weird part!") is in the "Animal House" tradition. But the movie slowly darkens, and the final game offers up a nice helping of pain: players playing on drugs to numb pain, and getting crippled for life; linesmen coming close to killing their opposite numbers on the field ("F--k him!" Big Bo says of a fallen opponent in devastating pain on the ground); nice guy Mac Davis suddenly turning all cold-hearted business in the huddle as a QB who knows his career's on the line if he doesn't win.
Dabney Coleman is a great corporate villain, as usual (Nolte could deck him, but can't); suave Steve Forrest is good as Coleman's only slightly more principled rich brother; Charles Durning plays a middle-manager coach chugging Pepto Bismol, and the famously cruel-faced and icy G.D. Spradlin plays the Tom Landry-inspired coach who has no emotion, runs player stats through a computer and values faceless teamwork among all. (Spradlin actually played much nastier guys than this rather fair coach, its just that his scary manner infected this part, too.)
As "the big guys," Bo Svenson and NFL pro John Matuzak were the real deal: scary elephant men trained to destroy on instinct and to use their size to intimidate. Matuzak gets a surprisingly heartfelt scene where he grabs fat little Charles During by his shirt and yells about how much he loves to play football as a game, not a job. Nice performance. The Tooz would die from steriod abuse later.
But all of them are in the service of Nick Nolte, back when he was really something, and not quite the lesser-regarded veteran of today. Nolte connects with his role beautifully -- you believe that every bone, joint, and muscle in this guy's body is in misery when he wakes up, you believe that he has given everything to the game. But ol' Phil is just too noble, too principled, and too independent. And he gets fired. And it feels like death.
But maybe not. You know what movie "North Dallas Forty" reminds me of? Billy Wilder's "The Apartment," in which Jack Lemmon suffers for the whole movie to make it in a big corporation and decides to quit for his honor and the girl that he loves -- and gets.
That's Phil's story, too. And as usual, its a great moral to hope for.
Excellent analysis, ecarle. Some of the most thoughtful writing I've seen on these boards (and lord knows, you don't see that often around here . . . )
I remember reading an article in Sports Illustrated about the woman who played Charlotte (she apparently was in one of the swimsuit issues back in the 70's) and it called NDF "a B movie." And at least in some respects, I agree. The game sequence toward the end is just so horrendous - where are the fans? They couldn't afford any extras, or just some stock footage? It's obvious they're on some high school field and there's no one else there but the players and coaches. Very cheesy.
Great analysis - just 2 minor quote corrections:
Dabney Coleman as the general manager needles Phil about the new top draft pick wide receiver whose contract he just signed:
"So --- do you speak Canadian?"
and the great line - "WE'RE JUST THE EQUIPMENT" is delivered by Mac Davis.
Still, with all of the great performances in this film, the locker room speech by John Matusak damning the coaches and executives as *beep* is the high point in the film - "Every time I say this is a GAME - you say it's a business, and every time I say it's a business, you say its a GAME!".
Every time I watch this film, I'm reminded how pained and remorseful the Tooz was when he was interviewed by Roy Firestone(?) after he had brain surgery to try to stem the cancer he believed was caused by his massive use of steroids...shortly before he passed away. He was trying to warn young players to avoid destroying their bodies with chemicals...Firestone was dubious of his sincerity since the chemicals had kept him in the game longer than he otherwise could have survived...
"But Roy - IT HURTS SO BAD!"
In the film - his frustrated speech was a horrifying glimpse of the actual pain that was a part of his game, and of the terrible choices he made to stay in it as long as he possibly could.
It gives me chills...
"Every time I watch this film, I'm reminded how pained and remorseful the Tooz was when he was interviewed by Roy Firestone(?) after he had brain surgery to try to stem the cancer he believed was caused by his massive use of steroids...shortly before he passed away"
Are you sure you didn't mean to say "Lyle Alzado" had brain surgery? AFAIK the Tooz's death came quick, from heart failure.
Thanks for the correction - just after I posted I realized I had the two of them confused in me hideoso cabeza...(the release of the Mitchell Report brought Alzado's name back into the news...)
Alzado did do some acting as well, having appeared in a couple of movies.
For another swell Matuszak performance check out Savage Steve Holland's 'One Crazy Summer'...
"and the great line - "WE'RE JUST THE EQUIPMENT" is delivered by Mac Davis."
I'm 11 years late to this party, but ecarle was right. That was Nolte's line toward the end when he was being fired and making his passionate appeal to the head coach. In writing this, I was surprised I couldn't recall the name of the coach. I looked it up and discovered it to be B.A. Strothers, whose last name I don't remember even being mentioned. B.A. did ring a bell though...
great review, and dabney coleman was perfect, yep.
Season's Greetings
There is no doubt this IS the best football movie ever. Maybe even the best SPORTS movie ever.
Possibly Nick Nolte's best performance, and definitely the best performances ever given by Mac Davis and Bo Svenson.