Surely director Phil Joanou had nothing but the best of intentions while making Gridiron Gang, yet another in a long, long line of inspirational sports movies. Based on a 1993 documentary about violent juvenile offenders in the Los Angeles area who are given a chance to excel on the football field, the story is one of hope and inspiration. The program, spearheaded by Sean Porter, a counselor who worked in the corrections system in Los Angeles, has helped many of the young men who played on the team keep from returning to a life of crime. I just wish that Joanou had found a more honest and unique way to tell Porter’s story. Instead, he follows the standard sports-movie playbook, giving us stereotypes where honest portrayals are needed and run-of-the-mill situations when innovation is called for.
As the film unfolds, it’s anything but quiet as a young juvenile offender who had just recently been released from the institution where Porter (Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson) works is killed on the streets. His cousin Willie (Jade Yorker), out for revenge on the gang that committed the murder, slays his mother’s abusive boyfriend instead. After he’s convicted of the crime, he winds up under Porter’s watchful eye at Camp Kilpatrick, along with other angry young men with little or no family support, a recipe that ends with as many as 75 percent of them returning to crime when they are released.
Determined to change things, Porter and his assistant, Malcolm Moore (Xzibit), persuade the naysayers (Leon Rippy and Kevin Dunn) where they work to form a football team with the stereotypes — whoops, sorry, young men — they’re responsible for. Reasoning that if they enjoy success in at least one area of their life it will carry over into others, Porter and Moore don’t let the predictable hurdles (lack of equipment or a schedule) stop them.
The story, however, suffers because of Joanou’s melodramatic telling. Instead of seemingly escaping the mean streets of Los Angeles by way of an innovative social program, it appears that the members of the Gridiron Gang were living in a Tinseltown screenplay in which Boys Town and The Longest Yard converged. They, and the viewer, deserve better.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2006.
