The Slaughter Rule [VHS]
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VHS Movie Reviews of The Slaughter Rule [VHS]
Movie Review: a few good elements but weak overall
Summary: 2 Stars
**1/2 Despite the novelty of its setting, "The Slaughter Rule" is a fairly conventional coming-of-age tale about a boy who grows into manhood by becoming a member of a ragtag six-man football team. Roy is a teenager trapped in a small Montana town whose life has not been going any too well of late. His father, with whom he had only the most casual of relationships, has been discovered dead on a railroad track, a possible suicide victim. His mother, embittered by their divorce, sleeps around with countless men and has no real inclination to provide her son with any but the most cursory form of maternal affection. On top of all this, Roy has just been rejected for the school's varsity football team because the coach finds him lacking in the kind of "anger" he feels a player needs to be a success on the gridiron. When Roy is asked by Gid, a somewhat eccentric older man in the town, to come join his six-man football team, the youth only reluctantly acquiesces (six-man football is a near rule-less poor relation to the real game, one ostensibly only played by farm boys). It is at this point that Roy's growth into manhood begins, since it turns out that the enigmatic Gid, who one assumes will be merely a father figure for the affection-starved youth, may be seeking more than just a father/son, athlete/coach relationship with the boy.This latent-homosexual subtext, in fact, is just about the only element that separates "The Slaughter Rule" from countless other films in this genre. Most everything else about the film feels derivative and stale: the emotionally distant parents, the promiscuous, psychologically detached mother, the abusive stepdad, the sweet girl who wants to flee this hicksville town as fast and as far as a bus ticket can take her. Towards the end, especially, the filmmakers start to pile up the heartbreaks and tragedies, one on top of the other, almost to epic proportions. One wonders how so much can happen in so short a time to so small a group of people. In the almost two hour running time of the film, only the ambiguity of the Roy/Gid relationship arouses any real interest in the viewer.
Ryan Gosling is tremendously appealing as the troubled Roy, and David Morse (the father in "Contact") turns Gid into a nicely sympathetic figure. The starkness of the Montana landscape also provides an appropriate backdrop for the bleak melodrama that is playing itself out in the foreground. Apart from these few quality elements, however, there isn't a whole lot else to commend in "The Slaughter Rule."
Movie Review: Sundance Slaughters Cinema Standards
Summary: 4 Stars
Sundance directors and screenplay writers constantly slaughter the rules of filmmaking in splendid style. THE SLAUGHTER RULE is no exception to the Sundance standard, however it slowly twists the rules before it nearly breaks them right off.Set in the bleak and dreary high school years of a cold and frozen-ground Montana, this story of the strong-arm sport of six-man football and a young recruit who recklessly tries to control the often brutal game is clearly a sad satire of lives that many wouldn't bother living. The actual regulation, the slaughter rule, allows a team to simply quit when they're getting badly beaten by their opponents. As our young athlete slowly realizes that you can't stop the weather and you can't keep out the cold and you can't control what you don't respect, he begins to wish that life had a slaughter rule of its own.
Ryan Gosling (THE BELIEVER) continues to excel from one movie to the next. He's like a young Edward Norton (AMERICAN HISTORY X), choosing films for their class and their taste rather than for their big screen appeal. David Morse (THE NEGOTIATOR) is a complex and emotional coach with an odd and dubious attachment to his players. The writing by brothers Alex and Andrew Smith is incredible, as is the often black and white cinematography set in their Montana home. A dreary soundtrack score by alt. country forefather Jay Farrar is subtle and hits home in a simple sort of way. Farrar manages an uppercut from a light slap similar to the way that snow-capped mountains cut the landscape.
This film is not for everyone. It's a football movie on the outside, but don't look for ANY GIVEN SUNDAY or VARSITY BLUES here. Many viewers will have issues with the slow storyline and with the lack of resolution when the credits roll. But, these are the spectators that have problems looking at life as well.
Movie Review: Heartbreaking
Summary: 5 Stars
Ryan Gosling is a wonder!!! The scenes between Ryan and David Morse were so intense that I was moved to tears several times.Both gave heartbreakingly beautiful performances.Sadly a much misunderstood movie...
Movie Review: Uneasy relationship between coach and quarterback
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall, I liked this film for many of the reasons already mentioned here. It's a high school sports movie that brings to mind the scores of films that have been made in this genre (e.g., "All the Right Moves"), and it tries mostly successfully to work against that genre's conventions. It also explores the male-bonding that underlies the relationship between coach and player by bringing together two males who are both outsiders, each needing the other to fulfill a sense of purpose in lives that are otherwise going nowhere. Whether the coach's need for "friendship" crosses a boundary is an ambiguity that, from the point where you first see it, makes the film not an easy one to watch. And the filmmakers have created a tension there (sexual or otherwise) that their film doesn't totally resolve -- which is maybe appropriate in the hard-bitten world of the movie, where football is played under bleak winter skies on snow-swept, frozen fields. Endings are often difficult, and this one feels somewhat contrived and melodramatic, but the overall film remains strong, and its moody narrative sticks with you long afterward.
Morse, as the coach, has played this kind of character before and portrays well a man of both pride and weakness, who has experienced hurt and failure. Ryan Gosling is wonderfully natural and plays the young protagonist with what seems to be complete understanding. His affair with an "older" woman may seem a nod to convention, but the relationship is written and played for the truth in it -- that his immaturity makes him less than what she's hoping to find in a man. Equally memorable is the cinematography, capturing the Montana landscapes in wan winter light. The music is perfect.
I like films that are not quite predictable, show me a world I don't know, and play with conventions, expectations, and ambiguities. This one held my attention from beginning to end.
Movie Review: wasteland
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought the DVD because, sadly, I had missed the screenings and couldn't find it for rental anywhere. The Jay Farrar music and the Indians were the reasons for me seeing it. To be a little critical, it came off as Cohen-brothers lite; if you strung together all the slower sequences of Blood Simple and Fargo, you'd have this movie. I did like the fact that nothing followed convention, and the hopelessness of living was conveyed well. I could've done without the scene near the end where a Native drives up in warpaint, hair flowing, on a motorcycle - it's like things turned into a Sherman Alexie story all of the sudden.