When the Game Stands Tall (2014), PG, ★★

They are celebrating. Woo-hoo!

"Inspired by a true story." I don't know how many sports films has that phrase, but I personally think there are way too many sports movies, but most of them range from pretty good to a great masterpiece. The pretty good movies are Remember the Titans, Friday Night Lights, Miracle, Rudy and Rush. The great masterpieces are Raging Bull, The Fighter, and Hoosiers. However, it seems to me that these "inspirational sports films" takes a toll to become overly sentimental instead of showing us what these players really go through. This movie becomes more of a overly sentimental fantasy than a true realistic sports film.

The movie takes place in 2003 in De La Salle High School where the De La Salle Spartans are playing their rivals, Pittsburgh High School. Coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) delivers a pep talk stating that "the streak was never their goal" meaning that they have won 150 straight games which is unbelievable. He says that there is no perfect game or play, but they have to "give a perfect effort from snap to whistle". And, because of that philosophy, they win their 151st straight game.

Ladouceur receives offers from colleges that he declines their offers despite Bev's (Laura Dern), his wife, strenuous displeasure to just "look and see" what they have to offer. His assistant coach and great friend, Terry Eidson (Michael Chiklis), does not offer his opinion and does not side with anybody.

However, tragedy strikes. As Coach drives home and arrives to his bed, Bev jokes that he better not snore and when she rolls to his side, she sees her husband having a seizure. He is visited by the football team and Bev tells him that he needs to spend time with his children while healing instead of being focused on the streak. And, also one of the players, T.K. Kelly (Stephan James), gets shot point-blank by an unidentified shooter and that causes grief amongst his family and community. De La Salle even loses their first game in quite a while. What do they do now?

The team kneeling down as the priest says a prayer.

Honestly, I wanted to like this movie but there are one too many backstories to characters that were unnecessary and broadly written that it was almost hard to care about what every character is doing or what they want to do. The main focus is about the football team's grief about how they are going to rebuild and re-capture their winning spirits, but that story is in the second half of the film. The first half of the movie was just a bit dull and even though there are two events, it was mainly just to drive the story forward and not become natural and just become another routine sports film.

Jim Caviezel is not really convincing as the coach as he just stares into the distance and delivers monotonic speeches and dialogue. He's no Billy Bob Thornton or Denzel Washington. Laura Dern, after a great role from The Fault in Our Stars, gets a thankless role as his wife which does not create something special. Clancy Brown plays another jerk, but worse, a careless father who is a jerk who cares about his son getting a record. The only bright performance is Michael Chiklis as the assistant coach. He embodies a great character and captures the spirit of the community, the football game and the sport itself.

Again, there are one too many backstories. The story with the mismatched relationship between and son was entirely unnecessary as people who will watch it will want to just throw beer bottles at him and give him a concussion. The job hunt is in arbitrary scenes that do not execute very well. However, the football scenes are worth mentioning as it is shot and framed real well as we want to root for the team despite the film's sports formula. You know what's going to happen. It is the activity beyond the football field that is formulaic and a bit corny that I despise. This movie is not a touchdown, I'm afraid.

**