Search - North Dallas Forty-Dvd (Chk) on DVD

A better halftime show than Janet Jackson

Jason A. Miller | New York, New York USA | 01/31/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is an unsparing, unsentimental look at pro football in which the players are alternately brutes, and slaves to management. Coaches shamelessly manipulate the players and then discard them the moment injury strikes; the players are drugged up in order to coax them onto the field, while at the same time the unpopular players are ensnared by drug charges in order to trap them at contract renegotiation time.

"North Dallas Forty" is probably one of my favorite sports movies, and definitely my favorite football movie. That's because of its defiant outsider approach -- "Ball Four", the baseball book that made Peter Gent's football novel possible, only ever wound up a lame sitcom; "North Dallas Forty" goes all the way. Even though the movie is based on the Dallas Cowboys of the 1960s, the instantly dated 1970s' filmmaking technique remains timeless (even if it's from the same director who made "Weekend at Bernie's", which is timeless for very different reasons).

Part of the movie's continuing appeal remains its cast. Nick Nolte is a brilliant lead, as the rebellious but honest-to-a-fault North Dallas wide receiver Phil Elliott. Phil tells it like it is and sees management for what they are, but doesn't realize he's being cheated out of his career until the third or fourth time he's been double-crossed by owners, coaches and friends alike.

Playing a riff on Dandy Don Meredith, country singer/songwriter Mac Davis plays sly quarterback Seth Maxwell. The rest of the football team is filled out with several ex-NFL players. John Matuszak's second acting career was launched by this movie, and Bo Svenson's football career should have been launched by this movie. The coaches, Charles Durning (as a cliche-spouting offensive coordinator) and the great G.D. Spradlin (playing a thinly veiled Tom Landry) both dominate their scenes. And yes, that's Dabney Coleman as an oil man and part owner who delivers one of the movie's best lines ("Do you speak Canadian?").

Dayle Haddon looks great as Phil's love interest, but otherwise gets overshadowed by the rest of the cast. She seems so disinterested in Phil throughout the movie that I was convinced their relationship wouldn't make it another week after the story ended.

Kotcheff directs his football scenes with an interesting approach that could never be duplicated today: there's not a single wide shot of a packed house, not a single closeup of a spectator in North Dallas face paint and a Maxwell jersey. Gone are the excesses of modern TV football coverage, and the only product endorsement I could spot was for xylocaine. Most of the early football action is shown in mute flashbacks, and the climactic game against Chicago is not joined until after the two-minute warning. Even with such minimal football, however, Kotcheff's action is so muddy, bloody and cruel that you can imagine the final game sequence was cued up in L.T.'s VCR the fateful Monday night he tangled with Joe Theismann's leg.

Always worth watching every late January, "North Dallas Forty" is one of those films you hope is never going to be remade, because the original has everything you need in a football movie."