40 hommes à abattre

'ND40' is my favorite of all the sports movies I've seen. It's both a dark and funny look at professional football, succeeding on both levels, with special emphasis put on the way the pro machinery chews up players and spits them out. There's no doubt who the fictional North Dallas Bulls are supposed to correspond to in real life, and the Dallas Cowboys were none too happy with either the book or the movie. For the rest of us it is first-class entertainment.

The movie abounds with great performances. Nick Nolte is superb as the aging wide receiver, weary in spirit and broken of body. His independence and declining skills are threatening his usefulness to the team. G.D. Spradlin gives one of his usual excellent performances playing the team's amoral head coach. It's the type of role he seems almost to have a patent on.

Some actors in this movie, I suspect, are doing the best work of their careers. Mac Davis plays the fun-loving quarterback who is serious about keeping his position both with the team and the ladies, and knows all the tricks, whether it's before, during, or after the game. Steve Forrest is the millionaire owner who wants nothing in the world more than a Super Bowl championship team. And Bo Svenson and former pro player John Matuszak are a couple of linemen who play by the same rules on the field and off.

It's a complex movie with so much going on in some scenes (just like a football game) that it deserves to be seen more than once. One small quibble: the big game was obviously not filmed before an audience. That doesn't detract too much from the overall picture, but a viewer is aware of it.

Fine sleeper film, very much a reflection of iconoclastic 1970's. Seldom has corruptive nature of professional sports been on more vivid display than here. Pro football (and others?) comes across as supremely exploitative of players, with millionaire owners collecting the reflected glory. Sure, the money is good as is the lure of easy women, while all the adulation is hard to resist, but the cost comes high as battered and bruised Nick Nolte finally figures out. Emphasis throughout is on obvious physical toll, but inner toll proves equally devastating. Team quarterback Mac Davis's sly character and coaching staff's slimy ploys illustrate that inner rot in sometimes subtle fashion.

Davis's understated performance provides memorable glimpse of intelligent man trapped by own weaknesses. Also one of Nick Nolte's most natural performances in both a brilliant and unorthodox career. His Phil Elliot may not be as clever as Davis, but the love of the game is truer, helping him finally see through the clouds of hype. But where oh where was director Kotcheff when beleaguered non-actress Dale Haddon so clearly needed help. Her one and only expression, paralyzed fear, almost brings down the entire film. Was the casting of this ex-Playboy playmate Hugh Hefner's price for assistance with the production?

Thanks Peter Gent for the gutsy expose' and Frank Yablans for bringing it to the screen intact. (After all those Monday evenings on TV, who could ever think of Tom Landry, Don Meredith or straight-laced Roger Staubach the same way again.) (Then too, fans might check out 1949's "Easy Living", a less caustic but also revealing film on the earlier days of pro football.) All in all, the screenplay of North Dallas is one of the best from the period -- humorous, savvy, and richly ironic -- the final boardroom scene arguably among the most compelling of any on sports. It's also one of the best arguments for getting athletics out of all those cathedrals of cult worship and back into neighborhood sandlots where they belong.

Seen this movie a few times on TV and it is a superb football film. Nick Nolte is excellent as the gruff and rough guy with lots of problems on and off the football field. Being in the 70's makes it even better and more realistic. Made in a time when men where men and sports meant more than money, a lot more. Sex, booze, knocking heads and blood & tears is what make these players happy! Good, fun all round film with great thought put into the story especially when entering Nolte's problems with team management/owners. As we all know deep rifts and problems occur between sports players and club owners but we never get to really know the truth and what goes on in the boardroom and player meetings. This film gives us a little make look at what could or should I say happens! I enjoyed this film very much,love the music, great characters and a good story. A winner all around.

When this movie first came out (late 70's), I was still in high school and very naive as to the behind the scenes machinations of professional football. This movie was ahead of its time in its depiction since no other movie on professional football had ventured into this area exposing drug use, both off the field casual usage and to get players on the field, and indifference of ownership and coaching staff to players feelings and thoughts.

Nick Nolte was exceptional as Phil Elliot, the wide receiver whose character was based on Pete Gent, a wide receiver with the Dallas Cowboys who authored the book (North Dallas Forty) the movie was based on. He is a free spirit with little regard for authority but undoubtedly cares about his performance on the field. He cannot play by the rules because he doesn't make them. Mac Davis was great as quarterback Seth Maxwell, the jaded athlete who knows how to "bend" the rules to remain in good standing with the team.

Supporting cast, especially GD Spradlin as the coach modeled after Dallas Cowboys coaching genius Tom Landry, was excellent. If you have 2 hrs and want to catch a well-acted, well-written movie on the reality of professional football, then catch this flick. It preceded such films and Stone's Any Given Sunday, but its content is very relevant to football 30 years later.

and probably my favorite one! written by pete gent, a former dallas cowboy in the 60's, it gives a great look inside the mentality of professional football ... especially in dallas during the landry years. i enjoyed this film because i played ball at the college level in the early 70's, and i feel it's the most realistic portrayal of the emotional seesaw that a football player goes through.

the film shows what happens in a society where professional athletes are idolized, and the things they can get away with ... but at a cost! it portrays how the professional athlete must constantly look for new ways to achieve a "high", whether on the field, with drugs, sexually, or just by "cutting loose". the problem is that each high gives way to when you either make a mistake on the field, or come down from the "off-the-field" high.

if you were a football fan in the 60's-70's, you can just see the dallas cowboys in this film! mac davis does a wonderful characterization of don merideth, and g.d. spradlin's coach just reeks of tom landry. and nolte does a magnificent job in one of his earliest works.

please, take some time and watch this film. the videotape version is obviously much better than the tv version ... you lose a lot of the reality otherwise. please, if the first-run shelf is empty, take the time to check out this film. you won't be disappointed.