When the Game Stands Tall is about coach Bob Ladouceur and his values. Bob Ladouceur turned down bigger offers to coach high school and build people. The movie has religious values about the measures we give is the measures we receive. Team over individuals, depending on each other, commitment, and selflessness over selfishness. One experiences the unfairness and trials of life, and the dealing with adversity. I keep seeing in substories Good over evil, and light over darkness. The most low point in a bad year and the movie is over come by giving at a V A hospital. A strong script, and inspiring story. The directing and acting excelled. One experiences the intelligence/strategy, heat, pain and pressure during the football action. The distractions and frustration off the field blend into the field action excellently. How the team deals with the adversity not only make the team winners, but builds productive people. The ending scene is inspirational. I give What the Game Stands Tall and eight out of ten.

. . . will just love seeing Mel Gibson's "Jesus" (actor Jim Caviezel) carrying NOT just one person, as in the poem, but an entire football team on his shoulders for hundreds of yards. When Jesus, a.k.a., head De la Salle H.S. gridiron coach Bob Ladouceur, this time, is accused of cheating by his coaching peers at a league meeting, his California pig-skinners immediately lose their next two games after having won an American record 151 in a row. Sure, Bob's heart attack and the murder of a key player might have had a little to do with this, but anyone who knows their football realizes that the real problem was that Bob scheduled his Concord SPARTANS to play the Bellevue, WA, WOLVERINES in Game 152. When have green-and-white clad Spartans gotten much of a break against Wolverines (even those clad in maize & purple)? With the players' constant rendering of The Lord's Prayer and ubiquitous Bible verse quotations, movie goers will wonder whether they've bumbled into church. Hopefully, many of the players depicted here have followed in famed Gridder Pat Tillman's footprints to keep us all safe from Terrorism, rather than accumulating dangerous quantities of cash from the NFL.

Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) is the coach of the De La Salle Spartans in Concord, California. In 2003, they win their 12th consecutive championships and a unimaginable streak of 151 wins. Graduates Cam Colvin and T.K. Kelly are friends facing challenges. Bob has a heart attack and is forced to stop coaching. His son Danny has trouble catching and is frustrated with his dad. His wife Bev (Laura Dern) wants him to accept the college job offers. Chris Ryan has a chance to break the state TD record and suffers under his demanding father Mickey Ryan (Clancy Brown). Coach Ladouceur is able to return but the team loses the first two games. Then they face the #1 ranked team in the state, Long Beach Polytechnic High School.

The true story and Bob Ladouceur's message forces the movie to struggle for a more traditional drama. The graduates' story is important but they're separated from the team's main story. The game against Long Beach is the most dramatic but it happens midway in the movie. However, this message movie needs to continue so that the message can be explained and end with the final game. It's not that the final game that is the most important but the final play which delivers the morality tale. Quite frankly, the last half of the movie should be done in an extended postscript. The drama is in the first three games.