A Season on the Brink

A Season on the Brink, the first movie made by ESPN ain't gonna win any awards, but its an entertaining looks at the most wildly charismatic and controversial coach in NCAA basketball history, Bobby Knight.

You can tell when you watch the movie that it didn't quite have the budget of your normal movie - the basketball scenes are kinda cheesy lookin and when they try to weave it in with actual game footage it looks a little ridiculous.

But the movie is worth watching just for Brian Dennehy, who looks and talks exactly like Bobby Knight. The movie surely takes some dramatic license, it has to, and the cast arouns Dennehy is nothing to write home about - but Dennehy sparkles and the movie is certainly worth watching for any college basketball or any sports fan.

ESPN attempts to give us a look at the inside wheeling and dealings of the charismatic coach Bobby Knight(Brian Dennehy)whipping an Indiana Hoosier team into shape to compete in the 1985-86 basketball season. Knight is the vocal point of the project and there are some good scenes where real game footage is used. Interest is moderate and it is odd watching a candy coated, but nonetheless brash vision of the ballsy coach. Dennehy seems at ease with the role and some good performances are turned in by Al Thompson, James Lafferty, Michael James Johnson and Yorick Park as Indiana team members. Not as impressive as a three pointer, but worth a trip to the free throw line.

Absorbing and highly interesting portrait of how Bobby Knight (Brian Dennehy) handled the numerous on-going dilemmas while coaching the Indiana Hoosiers during the tumultous 1985-86 season. I don't know anyone else who could handle playing "The General" besides Dennehy. Playing Bob Knight isn't exactly like playing a character from a William Shakespeare story. The atmosphere that is displayed here during any of the games, practices, or off the court isn't only real, but very bleak and unforgiving. The movie is based on a novel (of the same title) written by John Feinstein. I give the people at ESPN who decided to back the movie a lot of credit. A captivating and emotional tour-de-force.

This film clearly is not the greatest one in the history of the world, but it does have one real thing going for it. Brian Dennehy's performance as the General (AKA Bob Knight) is probably the greatest portrayal we will ever see of the character. True, he does not look or sound exactly like Bob Knight, but who else does? Dennehy had a very challenging role in this picture, and while the representation is not exact (he said himself that one can't act exactly like Bob Knight without getting a headache), I can't imagine anyone doing better.

I think that Bob Knight is a character who is best explored in documentary form, and that approach would have worked just fine as a film. As it is, however, we're left with a TV movie that is just slightly above average.

6/10

Being an avid ESPN watcher, I can't even guess how many previews the network had for "A Season on the Brink"...To be honest I think the producers should have spent more time on the actual program then on all the hype. OK, this movie really seemed to have no middle ground: In the majority of scenes with his current players Bob Knight is just a bully. His language is just atrocious, and plainly it offended me to hear the F-bomb 50+ times in this movie, the show made its point that BK has a "potty-mouth," but enough was enough. Secondly, the other half of the movie tried to pain BK like a total angel. The scenes with his lovable son seemed contrived and way to lovey-dovey. When the older player(guy in wheel-chair) comes back to watch a practice he thanks Bob for saving his life, buying him a home, giving him a foundation....blah blah blah The movie just ended 10 mins ago, so maybe I'm jumping to a quick conclusion...but I think ESPN should stick to what it knows with sports broadcasting and forget its new original films projects