This post Hippie, late seventies, anti establishment film (the establishment in question being corporate sports) has a few problems but is mostly an enjoyable and at times powerful look at by far the most brutal of American athletic obsessions. It is especially good when employing locker room humor and disturbing, locker room detail to get at the pain and raunch that are at the center of football culture. Mac Davis' wonderfully scatological tale of the corruption of a religious QB is alone worth the price of admission. And the stuff involving needles, pills, and agonizing physical discomfort at times borders on the harrowing. As do the scenes on the football field, both in practice and actual games.
Where the film loses its edge, in my opinion, is when it gets up on its soapbox and pushes the very tired trope of the Evil Owners versus the Downtrodden Players. Not only were football players, even in the 1970s, paid way too much to be downtrodden but the speechifying from Nick Nolte and John Matuszak in the film's last third really slows down the action and takes what had been a fairly unpretentious movie into heavy, message laden waters. I also wearied of Nolte's character, modeled on Peter Gent upon whose novel the film is based. There is about him a general, unattractive air of elitism and superciliousness, especially evident at the orgy scene, where you can almost hear him bemoaning the fact that he, the reader of books and dater of intelligent brunettes, must suffer the company of these savages and their blonde bimbos. The character played by Mac Davis, by contrast, based on Don Meredith, is much more appealing in his combination of virtues (a wicked sense of humor and general perceptiveness about the folly of humanity) and flaws (a very elastic morality that easily embraces corruption). Indeed, if this Ted Kotcheff film had concentrated on the always uneasy Davis/Nolte friendship, instead of the evils of corporate sports, it might have had a chance at greatness. As it is, let's give it a B minus.
