Peter Gent's roman-à-clef about the Dallas football organization is as single-voiced on the screen as on the page -- a defeat for the collaborative possibilities of filmmaking. One might have hoped, for instance, that the producer and former president of Paramount Pictures, Frank Yablans, who takes partial credit for the moralistic script, could have lent a little more conviction to the management point of view in the movie. It is possible, even now, to see how the nonconformist hero, an aging pass receiver played with an infinite repertoire of grunts and groans by Nick Nolte, might have appeared to his coaches and teammates as a hot dog and a cry baby (why does this guy suffer so much more than anyone else on the team? is it just that he's so much more sensitive?), but no such view is encouraged. The only voices given any credibility in the movie are those that harmonize with the hero, particularly that of a barely identified female who looks like a China doll and who symbolizes brains (she reads Agatha Christie at bedtime) and not brawn ("Game!" she squawks. "You call men smashing each other a game!"). Some of the behind-the-scenes details are nice (the rowdy reactions of the players as they watch the films of their last week's game), but they never add up to a very complete or a very convincing view of pro football. Mac Davis, G.D. Spradlin, Charles Durning, Dayle Haddon; directed by Ted Kotcheff. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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