Number One

The faded star-quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, over-the-hill at 40 and nursing a bad knee, considers retirement after an anonymous source disparages his season performances in print. Character rumination stacks the deck against our embittered hero: he's offered a management position with a computer firm and another job leasing cars (both offers are seen as dead-ends), while his unhappy wife is ready to walk out and a former teammate comes to him begging for a loan ($200!). Screenplay by David Moessinger is full of cynical one-liners substituting for insight into these unfulfilled people, while the football milieu is used mainly as a backdrop to the melodramatic action off the field. Charlton Heston is all wrong as an athlete--just because the man is tall and lean doesn't mean he's an ideal candidate for a football uniform. Heston is also unusually harsh with spouse Jessica Walter, who tired quickly of the Football Wives circle and now runs her own successful fashion business (Heston insults her creativity, equating it with an apparent inability to conceive a child; she slaps at him, he grabs her, and they end up making love). Director Tom Gries offers us only a flicker of insight into the world of professional football. He tries avoiding gridiron clichés, and his narrative timeline is interestingly woozy (mixing staccato flashbacks with bits of reality and, maybe, delusion), but the overall mood of the piece is unbelievably morose. Moessinger really does appear to believe that 40 means you're finished, washed-up. Heston may have felt there was something in the script he could play, something substantial and (atypical for the actor) not-heroic, but the picture isn't convincing. The foundation of the story--an aging man's fear that he's no longer useful after outgrowing his profession--is a good dramatic starting point for a character portrait (and still feels relatively fresh today), yet the writing is pretentious and dishonest. As to the downbeat finale, it underlines the pervading message that we're all "whores", like it or not. ** from ****

If you can get past not seeing Charlton Heston in his usual stereotypical, larger than life epic roles you may enjoy seeing him take a turn at a modern drama as a normal human.

This movie is "very late 60's style" which is fun to watch now with it's flashback scenes and sixties lingo.

Great supporting cast and good chemistry all around. It's also neat seeing Heston in his sexier than usual love scenes.

Heston's performance is solid. You can feel his pain and bitterness. I highly recommend this film for Heston fans, sports fans and sixties film buffs.

Charlton Heston is the star quarterback for the New Orleans Saints..... and he's forty and thinking about retiring. The people around him are all younger than he, admiring and envious, management, who don't really care, and wife Jessica Harper, who has been listening to him talking about retiring for half a decade.

It's a well done rather melancholy portrait of a man who doesn't want to give up what makes him special. Bruce Dern, unlikable as always, gave up the game a decade earlier and now is the biggest car dealer in the state. He doesn't know why Heston won't quit and come make money with him. Only one, old, non-star player, now working in the oil fields, seems to have any idea of what Heston is going through.

Heston gives one of his mostly-stoic-then-cursing roles, and he's very good.

This movie didn't do well at the box office; they never distributed it overseas, figuring that no one cares about American football except Americans. I think A.E. Housman would have liked this movie.

Number One (1969)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Charlton Heston plays Ron Catlan, an aging quarterback in the NFL who is entering his fourteenth season. Catlan goes through a disastrous pre-season and injures his knee so in the week leading up to the regular season he must decide if he wants to hang it up or try for one more shot of glory. This film has gotten several very negative reviews including one in Leonard Maltin's guide but I think they were a little too hard on the thing. Yes, it's nothing ground breaking and it's certainly not too deep but I thought it made for an entertaining little movie. There's nothing overly special to be found here but there's an interesting story here of the elderly quarterback trying to weigh his options. These include the retirement but also a friend (Bruce Dern) is trying to get him into a car business that would probably lead to more money and he wouldn't have to take a beating. He's also dealing with his wife (Jessica Walker) as well as a woman (Diana Muldaur) he starts an affair with. I think the film does a decent job at showing the struggle that a NFL player might go through and its this aspect that works the best here. All the personal drama with the wife and girlfriend is pretty melodramatic but none of it is soapy enough to where it kills the film. Another benefit for viewers of today is seeing the old fashioned football gear (New Orleans Saints is the team), stadiums and fans. The performances are all pretty good with Heston doing a very good job in the lead. There were a few times that I had a hard time buying him as a football player but he fit into the drama very well. Heston really appeared to know what it was like struggling getting old but he handles everything fine. Walter, a few years from PLAY MISTY FOR ME, is also good as the wife. Her and Heston really come across like a real couple, which was a plus. I thought Muldaur stole the film as the girlfriend as she really brought across some "60s swing" to the role. Dern doesn't have too much to do but he's certainly a shot of energy at least. I think the film does rely on flashbacks a bit too much and I'd argue that the thing moves at a predictable pace. With that said, the film is certainly innocent enough and I'm sure fans of Heston will enjoy seeing him here.

Chuck Heston is not a football star, but an actor playing one. I laugh at the comments made by the other comments here; expecting Chuck to play like a pro. That's why they call it acting.

Truthfully, football is only a backdrop for a story about a faded legend trying to hold on to his career by the skin of his teeth. It's an interesting tale of all of us; facing the reality of old age.

Being that this was filmed in the late 1960s, it has a real 60s flair to it, which to me makes it kind of neat. I liked the "surprise" ending.

Number One is not the greatest movie ever made, but it is a decent entertaining flick.