Blue Chips (1994)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

hyped garbage

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Nick Nolte plays a college University basketball coach forced to break the rules in order to stay competitive. He deals with guilt and struggles internally with something he has always been against.What a surprise Blue Chips was, expecting a below par sports movie (based on reviews) but found a thought provoking and entertaining 110 minutes. To begin with it hits the normal sports movie beats but just when you think the drama is going one way, suddenly it doesn't and that only adds realism to the action.William Friedkin does an excellent job in creating a tense and real life atmosphere, almost documentary style at least during the game-play scenes that makes you feel fully immersed. It's clear Friedkin and co have thoroughly researched this area and you get a sense of that while watching. The use of real life Basketball players and coaches adds to the authenticity.During the drama the film deals with the shady dealings that no doubt goes on in American sports at college level (It's a massive deal, where careers and futures are made). A story of greed, cheating and pressure to win. Nolte is great in the role and gets to show off his soft side while also providing his well known manic style. Blue Chips really is an under-rated film although not perfect it deserves to be more well known.

Blue Chips was a movie that was at least a decade ahead of its time, and its story is more relevant today than when the movie came out. It presents a question that other sports movies, including amateur sports movies, haven't explored. Namely, why should you bother to follow the rules when cheating is already widespread? Is it wrong to cheat if that's what it takes to compete? Is widespread cheating in amateur athletics the inevitable result of fans' obsession with winning? This movie would seem to suggest that the answers to those last two questions are "no" and "yes". Almost every other sports movie of the past 50 years has had some kind of uplifting ending, but this one ends mostly on a downer.Nick Nolte plays a college basketball coach, coaching at a major California basketball school (which might as well be UCLA), clearly modeled after Bobby Knight. He's a hot-tempered, aging and increasingly frustrated, old-school guy whose record has slipped in recent years. A shady booster enters the picture, trying to convince him that if he wants to be on top again, he has to start playing "the game" with recruits. He has to start making deals. Coach Nolte is initially hostile to the guy, but after it looks like he's going to get shut out of getting three huge recruits, he reluctantly changes his mind. Nolte gives an excellent performance in this movie. Everything that he does in the movie, whether it's angry tantrums against refs or the occasional dose of humor, he does well. He is convincing as a guy who just wants to mold student-athletes and coach the game that he loves. The speech that he gives at the end is priceless.The more I read about recruiting, especially basketball recruiting, the more I feel like I need to take a shower. This movie perfectly captures the sleaze of the sport during its recruiting scenes. There's the scum bag "deal maker" mother, who tries to peddle her influence to the highest bidder. There is the superstar white kid, who recognizes his value and demands a huge pile of cash. One kid eventually gets a new car. The movie ultimately presents a pretty revolting picture of college athletics, and if you have followed the scandals at places like Auburn, you know that it is pretty accurate.This movie could have been a failure, but it has that one important trait that all great sports movies have. It was made with a genuine love and respect for the sport. There is a lot of basketball porn in this movie, perhaps even too much. There are scenes that show Nolte coaching Xs and Os. The coaches yell out a bunch of terminology during practices and games, as opposed to 95% of sports movies, where coaches never sound like actual coaches. Blue Chips tries to be one of the more realistic sports movies ever made, and it largely succeeds. It perhaps goes a little too far though with the basketball porn, showing tons and tons of slam dunks and three pointers. If you watch this movie, you would get the impression that 90% of the scoring in basketball is due to these two plays. It also has a somewhat annoying appearance by Dick Vitale, which serves no purpose except to remind you that you are watching a basketball movie. The movie also shoehorns a few too many current basketball stars into it. That might have made it sell better at the time, but do you really care now whether Penny Hardaway and Bobby Hurley appear in it? (And Hurley plays for Indiana in this movie – LULZ).The worst part about this movie, ultimately, is the casting of the basketball stars in it. Namely, Shaquille O'Neal, who can't act his way out of a paper bag. To make matters worse, they give his character the most interesting background story, that of a Gulf War veteran with a "Black power, we shall overcome" type attitude. He's awful. He's really awful. It's as if he had a part written for Ice Cube or Denzel Washington, but then the studio decided that they needed a big name star in the case. He doesn't have many lines, but the ones that he has are not good.Blue Chips is one of those sports movies that you should see at least once. It's unlikely that you will remember it amongst the best that you have seen, but if you follow college athletics, you should at least find it interesting. Blue Chips shows us the hypocrisy of college athletics, and the seemingly futile endeavor of trying to keep money out of the hands of athletes. It is though provoking, albeit a bit preachy. Given the current debates about whether we should be paying players, this movie is now more relevant than it ever has been.

Blue Chips gives us a view of high pressure college sports.It is a film about basketball that stars Nick Nolte as a college coach,Pete Bell,who was based loosely on Coach Bob Knight of Texas Tech,together with real- life basketball stars Shaquille O'Neal,Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway and Matt Nover as talented recruits.Blue Chips examines greed, cheating, and "winning at all costs" in the world of college basketball. Pete Bell is the stressed-out coach on the verge of his first losing season, who hits the road in search of new players not already signed by a bigger school. He finds three prospects: a precision Chicago shooter Butch McRae,a giant farm boy Ricky Roe and a talented troublemaker Neon.All three top prospects, wise to the ways of college basketball recruitment, make excessive financial and lifestyle demands before they can be persuaded to come to the school.Coach Bell, already haunted by accusations of underhanded dealings, doesn't want to dig himself a deeper hole but has no choice. The movie was started really well.Director William Friedkin and Writer Ron Shelton made an accurate depiction of the reality of college recruitment and the morality play that schools figure in on the college sports.There was also a story about how college players get involved with game fixing themselves.The acting was great on Nick Nolte as usual.While the performance of Shaq was good for his first screen appearance.But in the end,it "chickened out" and opted for an implausible conclusion and resolved for a Hollywood ending.But given its poor ending,Blue Chips is still an entertaining movie to watch especially for basketball fans.

This movie seems to have a funny and interesting idea from the outlook. Yet this movies never quite takes off in the right direction or any direction. Through the first half of the movie it builds up as a comedy. In the second half it tries to alter itself into an engaging drama. Personally I had no problem with Shaq and Penny Hardaway in the movie. Nick Nolte with his character fit perfectly. Still the writing was totally unimpressive and horrible except for the one scene with Nick Nolte at the end with his press conference. Everything else in this movie seems to be cliché and would not amuse anyone except for small kids. The supporting cast other than the three basketball players and Nolte's ex-wife fit perfectly or should I say match the poor and cliché writing of this movie. For example J.T. Walsh was cast as Happy. Happy was in charge or at least had connections that helped Nolte get his top notch recruits with illegal strategies such as buying houses, giving money and buying other luxurious items for the recruits' families. J.T. Walsh seemed very easy to spot as a corrupt and horrible man even though his character is supposed to have a low profile and be behind the scenes. This presents a huge problem for a key character who does seem to be quite believable. He is supposed to be the man doing things under the table instead he is totally visible to the public.As I said before the writing in this movie does not engage the audience because it doesn't take on its own identity. It is hard to call this a comedy with too few jokes and attempts to amuse the audience and it is hard to call this a drama with the movie trying to be portrayed as a comedy. This movie could have been easily fixed if there was more work done on the writing and the casting. Blue Chips attempts to show the corruption in college sports but it fails to show the many aspects of it. Such as the corporate sponsors and the pressure an athletic director is under of loosing their job. It does not show the competing colleges vying for the top recruits and most of all it does not show you how such pure and genuine feeling such as playing a sport can be so easily corrupted by the pressure and the need for winning from coaches and colleges to fans and corporate sponsors. This sounds like a lot but could have been very easily included in the movie without having to overextend this into a 2 1/2 hour movie.