Fast on the heels of “Invincible” comes another reality-inspired football film. “Gridiron Gang” is loosely based on the story of Sean Porter, a juvenile detention camp probation officer who uses football to help straighten out the lives of a variety of Los Angeles delinquents.
Porter’s attitude: Forget about your gangs outside the fence, and accept the camp’s football team as your new gang.
Porter is played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a buff guy who certainly looks like the football veteran he is. Fortunately for filmgoers, he’s also the most charismatic and reasonably talented actor to emerge from the world of professional wrestling. Surrounded by little-known up- and-comers, Johnson is as close as “Gridiron Gang” comes to star power.
Stories about football teams behind bars aren’t unique – an earlier generation rooted for inmates in “The Longest Yard,” which suffered through an ineffective remake a year ago. “Gridiron Gang,” is decidedly more earnest, much less irreverent, and plays a bit younger, since the players are trouble-making teens instead of hardened lifers.
The juvenile delinquent angle is about all that makes “Gridiron Gang” different; otherwise, it’s a straightforward, rah-rah formula flick, as we follow a team’s fortunes in games of ever-increasing importance.
When sports movies work, it’s largely because the field of play gives a hard-and-fast definition to the drama. It’s the only movie genre where filmgoers literally know the score. However, such films only work if we care about the players or coach, and that’s sufficiently true here.
We are drawn into “Gridiron Gang” to the degree that we come to recognize team members and generally appreciate their struggles toward self-respect and responsibility. As Porter tells them, “It’s a far different world when what you achieve, you earn.”
Truthfully, that empathy isn’t as rich as it is in “Invincible”; yet it is there for filmgoers willing to invest in two uplifting football sagas in one movie season. “Gridiron Gang” also presumably speaks more forcibly to adolescents who can more readily identify with the teens and their problems.
The football footage is adequate for its narrative purposes, but falls short of what is found in better pigskin films.
Under the direction of Phil Joanou, however, Johnson contributes his best work to date, a forceful portrait of a concerned man with his own flaws to overcome while trying to provide meaning to troubled teens.
“Gridiron Gang” | ** 1/2 RATING
PG-13 for moderate violence, profanity|1 hour, 45 minutes|TEEN SPORTS DRAMA|Directed by Phil Joanou; starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Xzibit, L. Scott Caldwell |Opens today at area theaters.
