Rating: R
Genres: Sports & Recreation Culture & Society
Theatrical Release: 09/21/2001(USA
Release Date: 09/24/2002
Sound: DD5.1
Run Time: 103 min
Flags: Questionable for Children, Adult Language, Substance Abuse (Alcohol, Drugs)
Distributor/Studio: New Video Group

A first-hand account of young athletes in the high school football-obsessed town of Massillon, OH, this first feature by director Kenneth A. Carlson was shot on high-definition video over the course of the 1999 football season of the Massillon Tigers. At the beginning of the season, the team is nursing a "four-and-six nightmare season" and want to redeem themselves. Meanwhile, school officials attempt to raise funds though a tax levy after defeats at the polls, but if the levy is rejected again, it may mean unemployment for much of the school personnel, including the coaches. In retaliation, the players assume a winning season which puts extra pressure on them to earn scholarships and work much harder than a standard season. Among the handful of players depicted are Ellery Moore, a black defensive end with high ambitions to get out of his small town, especially after it is revealed that he has a shady past which may have included sexual assault. The film also candidly looks at the players off the field, as they drink and taunt fellow classmates who believe that the town has a misplaced sense of priorities.

~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

All you need to know about the importance of football to the people of Massillon, Ohio, a town of about 33,000 in the northeastern part of the state, is that when the 1999 team profiled here plays their final regular-season game against their archrival, Canton McKinley, the contest is held in the stadium next door to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. For 40 minutes, this documentary comes perilously close to a film that boosters for the school that has won 22 state championships would be proud to show, but then it begins to introduce some darker elements: academic concerns, a jail sentence for rape served by one of the team's co-captains, brief interviews with students disaffected with their school's obsession with football, and most importantly, controversy over a local school levy that has been defeated three times. The election to decide the levy is an issue for the entire season, and the coaches aren't reluctant to use as a motivator: So goes the football team, so goes the town's attitude about its schools. Of the three players profiled here--defensive end Ellery Moore, quarterback Dave Irwin, and linebacker Danny Studer--Moore is easily the most interesting, because he seems to have risen above his criminal past. One impression the film leaves is how tied in to religion sports are; there are any number of pep talks given by local ministers, and the team recites the Our Father in the locker room before the start of each game. Though the film does still come off as largely celebratory, it does offer enough evidence of the mixed blessings of high school sports to make it credible.

~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

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Cast:
Ellery Moore