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"Gridiron Gang"
Columbia Pictures
Directed by Phil Joanou
Written by Jeff Maguire, based on a 1993 documentary by Lee Stanley
Starring: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Xzibit, L. Scott Caldwell, Leon Rippy, Kevin Dunn, Jade Yorker and Setu Taase
Rated PG-13/120 minutes
Opens Sept. 15, 2006
Three out of four stars
Chris Bellamy
The Daily Utah Chronicle
First, the good news: The football players in "Gridiron Gang" do not gather together at a late-night eatery and sing along to the hits of Motown. In fact, there is no singing at all. There is no holding of hands or unintentionally parodying of the differences between black and white.
Now, the bad news: The phrase "you've got heart"-or some variance thereof-crops up far too often. Which is to say, more than zero times. But something interesting happens during the closing credits. We see actual video footage of the real coach, Sean Porter-portrayed here by The Rock-as he gives inspirational speeches to the group of juvenile inmates that he transformed into a disciplined football team. And, as it turns out, the real Porter used the "heart" cliché as well, among others. The lesson: Sometimes sports movies just can't avoid clichés. They are, after all, just imitating life.
Based on a 1993 documentary, "Gridiron Gang" is the dramatization of the "Kilpatrick Mustangs," the high-school level football team made up of inmates at Camp Kilpatrick, a juvenile detention center in Malibu, Calif., in the early '90s. It's 1993 and Porter (The Rock) and his associate, Malcolm Moore (Xzibit…seriously, don't expect any real names in this cast) are at a loss; they're in charge of dozens of kids, many of which are gang members, and don't seem to be doing them any good. They do their time, they head back to the street and get right back in trouble again…or they get killed.
So Porter suggests to the powers-that-be that he put together a football team that will play against high-school teams in the area. Now, getting the funding for uniforms and helmets is the easy part; finding schools willing to let their players face off against convicted criminals proves a little more difficult.
While the film spends most of its time at the camp as we see the team go through drills and gradually turn into a more disciplined bunch, "Gridiron Gang" doesn't shy away from the violent worlds these players come from. We see the mean streets they grew up on-and which many return to-and begin to understand the near-inevitability of their fates. Gang rivalries carry over into the prison yard, providing some genuinely suspenseful and even scary moments amid all the uplifting feel-good material.
For many, when released from Kilpatrick, rehabilitated or not, the kids have little to return to but the lives they already know-and, we discover, precious few people on the straight-and-narrow are willing to help them out. Porter, of course, is one of the exceptions, and The Rock plays the character with intensity and depth.
The Rock has been hailed as "the next Schwarzenegger" for obvious reasons, but he has more natural acting ability than his Austrian predecessor. Sure, he's great in action movies (see "The Rundown" for an example), but here, where he has nothing to hit and no one to shoot, he is completely convincing as a strict, caring football coach.
"Gridiron Gang" is not without its flaws. It's wildly uneven and does suffer from its share of melodramatic follies. And for the love of all that is holy, the musical score does not need to signal to us every single time something Big or Important is going to happen.
