Todo por ganar

I'm not a big sports movie guy, so I went into this not really expecting much other than killing 90 some minutes. I loved it! To see the struggle of a school and coach as they attempt to create a legit winning team in an environment of corruption was interesting. Then when they join that corruption it becomes exciting, you just know it's gonna blowup some time. Nick Nolte carries this film throughout it's entirety, and amazingly the real life players do a great job of acting and the rest of the cast is perfect. I love how they took real players and coaches and brought them into this film, it fits perfectly. The last 35 minutes of this film is brilliant. I've seen many people here talk of how bad this film is, I wonder if they just don't care about sports that much like myself, or have some underlying bias about admitting the corruption exists and always has in much of college sports. I don't care for sports! But I loved this film. The ratings this film gets on here really ticks me off, what is it, a 5.5 star average? I've learned one thing on here and other review sites, if you let others judge for you, you'll miss a lot of good movies.

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.

This movie is very underrated, it hasn't gotten nearly the credit it deserves. I thought it was very well done, although it wasn't perfect, it was still very good. It is the first movie to talk about a problem that is very prominent in todays colleges and their methods of recruiting. The film is very well written and Nick Nolte does a great, great job playing the conflicted coach.

Nick Nolte carries the movie and Mary McDonnell is great in a supporting role. It's not just a film for those who follow hoops or hate the inexplicable incompetence of the NCAA, it's also a story about the human condition.

This isn't a bad movie at all. Considering the scandals that have come to light about college athletes receiving cars, houses, money, etc. this film has even more relevance today than it did when it first came out.

To see a Shaquille O'Neal full of potential and natural talent (yet not yet spoiled by his own success) is a thrill - even for a Kings fan. His acting isn't the point; it's the few scenes that show him actually playing basketball that are worth watching for.