North Dallas Forty
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
Written by Frank Yablans, Ted Kotcheff, and Peter Gent from a novel by Gent
1979/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Phillip Elliott: Hell coach, I love needles.
Very seventies movie takes a look at the underbelly of professional American football and will probably be best appreciated by its fans.
Philip Elliott (Nick Nolte) is the star wide receiver on a team called “North Dallas” (a stand-in for the Dallas Cowboys). He’s aging and has acquired many injuries over the years.
The team members are tight and always ready for a party, as wild as possible. Elliott has been there and done that. He meets a soulmate, Charlotte (Dayle Haddon) at one such party and they become a couple despite Dayle’s discomfort about what football is doing to Elliott.
The more serious parts of the film show how the management is more concerned with wins than with the health of their players. The Super Bowl game puts Elliott into a crisis of conscience. With Mack Davis, Bo Svenson and John Matusack as players, Charles Durning as the coach, and Dabney Colman and G. D. Spradlin as management types.
I like Nick Nolte. And this is not a terrible movie. It does focus on the sport and I’m sure I would have liked it even better if I were a fan.
