When the Game Stands Tall: Gridiron glory

When the Game Stands Tall (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild intensity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

Inspirational sports sagas are the ultimate feel-good movies; they engage our souls and pluck at the heart, particularly when adversity and underdog status are part of the equation.

And most particularly when they’re true.

Coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel, center right), assistant coach Terry Eidson (Michael
Chiklis, center left) and members of the De La Salle Spartans react with undisguised
dread as the much larger and tougher members of the Long Beach Poly team take the
field. What follows is, by far, this film's most exciting chapter. 

Director Thomas Carter has fashioned a stirring drama from former Contra Costa Times sportswriter Neil Hayes’ 2003 nonfiction book, which profiled De La Salle High School football coach Bob Ladouceur at a point when his team had amassed a truly stunning streak of victories. Scripters Scott Marshall Smith and David Zelon have remained pretty close to established fact, allowing for the usual composite characters, one fast-and-loose modification of what happened when, and a needlessly melodramatic sidebar conflict between a young player and his overbearing father.

Those issues aside, Carter’s film is far more accurate than most that claim to be “inspired” by actual events; he respectfully captures the deeply spiritual tone that characterized Ladouceur’s entire coaching career, along with the atypically close ties and locker room candor that bonded the young players.

Yes, they really did take the field, at the start of each game, holding hands.

At first blush, star Jim Caviezel is a perfect fit for Ladouceur; as archive footage of the coach reveals, during the film’s closing credits, Caviezel looks and carries himself in much the same way. He adds the same heartfelt weight to the soulful pep talks that were typical of Ladouceur’s approach: “Winning a lot of football games is doable. Teaching kids there’s more to life, that’s hard.”

We don’t doubt, for a moment, that Caviezel’s Ladouceur genuinely cares about every single one of his players, off the field even more than on.

That said, Caviezel never has been an expressive actor, and those same closing-credits clips also show that the actor lacks the actual coach’s fire and passion. Caviezel is one of the acting community’s Mr. Cools, as his ongoing stint on TV’s Person of Interest reveals quite clearly. He’s dry and flinty, much like Clint Eastwood, and relies on half-smiles, grim silences and stern frowns to get his emotive point across.

Doesn’t always work. Co-star Laura Dern, as Ladouceur’s wife Bev, acts circles around him. She conveys greater emotional depth, in a few brief scenes, than Caviezel manages in the entire film. This is most apparent during the crisis that opens this story, as Ladouceur narrowly survives a heart attack that would have killed many men. Caviezel simply cannot sell the epiphany of Ladouceur’s initial post-recovery chat with his wife, as he acknowledges having been an absentee husband and father because of over-commitment to the job.

Nor does the film really address that issue, moving forward. Given Caviezel’s thespic limitations, that’s probably for the best.

Parker: Solid adaptation of a literary anti-hero

Parker (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for violence, profanity, sexual candor and nudity
By Derrick Bang

The best film Jennifer Lopez has made thus far remains 1998’s Out of Sight, director Steven Soderbergh’s slick adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel that introduced feisty bounty hunter Karen Sisco.

Parker (Jason Statham), posing as a wealthy Texas oil tycoon, accepts Realtor Leslie
Rodgers' (Jennifer Lopez) offer to show him various properties in Palm Beach. She
thinks he's looking for a house to buy; he's actually trying to figure out where some
former associates might have gone to ground ... because he'd really like to see them.

(Sisco, obviously too cool a character to drop, resurfaced — this time played equally well by Carlo Gugino — in a woefully under-appreciated 2003 ABC television series that ran only seven episodes, out of the 10 completed, before the plug was pulled. Fans wait in vain, to this day, for DVD afterlife.)

Crime thrillers appear to be Lopez’s forté, as opposed to the limp romantic comedies into which she invariably gets cast. I say that on the basis of her similarly slick and engaging work in Parker, based on an equally gritty novel by yet another veteran American thriller writer: the recently late and much lamented Donald E. Westlake.

A bit of history: Westlake employed the pseudonym Richard Stark when writing his Parker novels, from 1962’s The Hunter through 2008’s Dirty Money. The debut novel has been brought to the big screen twice: in 1967, as Point Blank, with Lee Marvin as “Walker”; and in 1999, as Payback, with Mel Gibson as “Porter.” Other Parker novels have been adapted for stars such as Robert Duvall, Jim Brown and Peter Coyote, all of whom played the character under a different name (Westlake having insisted on that, to retain control of his creation).

Although the revenge motif employed in this new film strongly echoes The Hunter, it’s actually based on a much later novel, 2000’s Flashfire. Scripter John J. McLaughlin deserves credit for a slick, polished and deliciously snarky adaptation, while Hackford gets to resurrect thriller chops he hasn’t exercised since 1984’s Against All Odds.

Let it be said, however, that Jason Statham owns this film, as is the case with pretty much everything the rugged action star embraces. His British origins notwithstanding, he’s the ideal personification of Parker: appropriate age, ideal physical presence, proper attitude. Marvin and Gibson weren’t bad, but Statham delivers just the right blend of resourceful arrogance, foolhardy stubbornness and wounded pride.

Parker’s all about commitment: If you promise to do something, you’d damn well better do it ... or risk the consequences. He’s also a career thief and cold-hearted killer, if a situation demands it: definitely a template for later series characters such as Lawrence Block’s Keller and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. And, like those other modern-day warriors, Parker isn’t a psychopath; he’s capable of kindness — after a fashion — and bears no ill will toward the innocent.

Statham nails that duality, as well.