Family values, family values. It’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. There’s no “I” in team. The wording of these bromides is changed slightly but they come thick and heavy in When The Game Stands Tall. Jim Caviezel plays high school coach Bob Ladoucer whose team at De La Salle high school has won 151 straight games, and he turns into a twitching teapot of repressed rage at the mere mention of “the streak.” It’s enough to give you a heart attack, something coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel)) experiences early in the film. The Bible he often quotes makes no endorsement of the cigarettes Bob sneaks after practice but, unlike his team, he’s not perfect.
His perky wife Bev (Laura Dern) finds him distant and ignoring of his kids in favor of all the football. Banned from coaching by his doctor, he’s given a chance by the heart attack to get closer to his teenage son, a wide receiver who finally is ready to move into a starting role on the team. Not so fast. “When I needed a father, I got a coach. Now that I need a coach, I get a father,” he complains. Sounds like his son needs to fill out one of the “commitment cards” coach Bob has his players compose.
Cazaviel has some fine moments, especially in dealing with a subsequent tragedy that befalls the team. Mostly, though, the former star of The Passion Of The Christ comes off pure vanilla and often listless. Bev tells him a story that his father, a clergyman, relays to her just before he died: if he wasn’t wearing his collar and she encountered the two men, she would definitely think his son was the minister. Yet Bev’s own leanings are anything but secular by film’s end when she righteously straightens out an obstreperous parent of a player. Yep, in a tall tale concocted just for the film, the star running back of the team is at odds with his dad. Chris Ryan (Alexander Ludwig) buys the team-first message but dad (Clancy Brown) keeps pushing him to think of himself and break an individual scoring record of which he’s within shouting distance. The dad is such an overwrought character director Thomas Carter might as well have had him in military gear brandishing a revolver while he robs little old ladies. He’s a brute even more menacing than an enormous defensive lineman named Buster, one of many 300-pounders who line up for the Long Beach Poly team that is De La Salle’s climactic foe in the film.
To give you an idea of the film’s religiosity, the time frame of this legendary game between the two powerhouses is drastically altered. In reality it was played in 2001, during DeLa Salle’s massive streak. In the film it is moved up three years to well after the team begins to lose. Without the change, this is just another sports movie, albeit one with dramatically well-done football sequences thanks to veteran stunt coordinator Allan Graf. With the change, the screenplay, based on the book by Neil Hayes, can proceed to drag out the old saws of male bonding, self sacrifice, and piety. Not that the film isn’t entertaining. When De La Salle players celebrate championships by sliding head first into the end zone, or coach Bob admonishes Ryan for a somersault over the goal line, the film creates sparks of adrenaline produced by the best of sports films.
In the big game Long Beach Poly suits up 100 players on a 100-degree day while De La Salle’s roster contains less than half as many. Since some exhaustingly play both on offense and defense, Ladoucer appoints the team trainer to actually make the second-half substitutions, informing him that under no circumstance will he sacrifice any player’s health for a win. Enter Arturo (Matthew Frias), a Rudy-like character who weighs closer to 100 pounds than 200. You can guess what happens.
What is less easy to foresee is the resolution between Chris and his cartoonish dad. It’s so preposterous it’ll have you scratching your head. (It’s even more preposterous that the film substitutes the white Chris Ryan for the black Maurice Jones-Drew, who played for De La Salle in the big game and is currently an Oakland Raider). Interestingly, controversial former Eagle wide receiver DeSean Jackson played at Long Beach Poly just after the big showdown with De La Salle. For a sequel, Bray could focus on a rematch between the two teams with Jackson giving Ladoucer one of his infamous gang salutes that helped him get in Chip Kelly’s doghouse.