The Slaughter Rule (2002)

Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent, a Must See

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is possibly the only time I can remember where the name of a film was changed for the UK market, and I approve. After all... DRIVE TO DREAM is much better than THE SLAUGHTER RULE, dontcha think? It stars a rather young Ryan Gosling and Amy Adams in an American football themed story, which is usually the sort of thing I turn my nose at... but as long as the film concentrates on the people rather than the intricacies of the sport, I don't really care.The most notable achievement here is in writing the coach as a believable ambiguously gay man which is no mean feat... check out the film My Brother The Devil for an example of this trope done wrong. His friendship with Goslings young hotshot (who is a bit unsure about his sexuality himself) is well done, and there are other minor triumphs of personality based conflicts throughout. A very modest work, but one which is worth your time... 6/10

This movie is offensive on many levels. The acting and directing makes this movie feel like a straight-to-TV movie. Except I wouldn't deem this movie suitable for a television audience. How tiresome is the theme of movies where the main characters are High Schoolers. The High School children are portrayed as adults ultimately. The movie showcases underage drinking as being normal and acceptable behavior. And it's full of underage High School children engaging in sexual activity. Showing High School children having sex is ultimately child pornography without nudity. These movies about High School kids drinking and having sex are so crude that the fictional High School characters portrayed wouldn't even be allowed to rent this movie themselves in real life. And to top all of this lewd behavior off, the adult main character is some creeper psycho who watches High School football games by himself and then trespasses into the High School to retrieve the names of the boys who didn't make the Varsity team and goes around town stalking them to recruit them onto his fantasy boys football team. I found myself watching this movie from an observational objective viewpoint just to study the type of mainstream Hollwood filth that gets fed into the minds of the masses who are conditioned to perceive what I consider to be filthy smut as normal.

Sometimes technical flaws can get in the way of what otherwise could have been a good story. These movie's flaws prevented me from enjoying it much.First, two key deleted scenes from the start of the film leave the entire premise feeling hollow. The scenes are offered as a special feature on the DVD. If I were to watch this movie again, I'd play these two deleted scenes where they should have been. First, the scene deleted after the conversation about the teen's father that opens the movie. Second, just minutes later the continuation of a scene talking with the coach in his office.This has been a growing trend, for directors to cut key scenes that explain things at the start of the movie. In at least commentary tracks directors have said they 'just wanted to get on with the movie'. Well of course they might, since they know the story intimately. The viewer won't, and could use the background to make an emotional connection to the movie. Unless the movie is past the two hour mark, why consider cutting valuable scenes?Gosling and some of the other performances were great. Of course Gosling does great even in rotten movies like Murder By Numbers. The wide screen was an overly wide aspect, I guess meant to highlight those beautiful outdoor scenes over the actors. It leaves barely enough room for actors' heads in places, and it made the brief shower scene no fun at all. To echo another comment, the sound was very poor in places. More than accents, it was bad mixing where sound jumped from soft whisphers to loud music then back. My finger ended up fiddling with the volume throughout.In hindsight, I might watch The Slaughter Rule once, but it won't be worth watching even a second time.

This is not a movie that will make one feel warm inside or good about humanity. The motives of the characters, and their actions, are often disturbing. But I found a great deal to appreciate in the effort that the writer and the actors brought to this. Along the lines of "Chuck and Buck" or the "Good Girl" in it's power to stay with you and make you think about people and things you mightnot want to! I saw a film today called "Igby Goes Down" with A list stars and a relatively high budget that was extremely pompous and made no effort tocommunicate. This small film easily outshines it on every level. I grew up in rural South Dakota and Minnesota and football is that serious a business there, and there are as many disturbing elements and people around this "heartland" asanywhere else. Extra thanks to Ryan Gosling (who has been good in everythingso far) David Morse and Clea DuVall for their great efforts here.