All The Right Moves - 1983
All The Right Moves belongs to a particular era of sports films. Watching it today, with these 2021 eyes, made two things abundantly clear to me: how of a time this film was, and how much sports pictures have changed over the years.
There have sports pics around since the silent film era, but somewhere around the mid to late 70's things started changing. Perhaps it was around The Longest Yard when the modern sports flick kicked into high gear. The next decade was filled with a veritable cascade of pictures with pretty tried-and-true formulas hitting just about every sport along the carousel. Bad News Bears, Vision Quest, and Hoosiers are a few that come to mind. Right in the middle of this era sits All The Right Moves.
I'm just not sure that ATRM really knows what is wants to be. And again, I'm not sure if that's just indicative of the sports films made around this time. Tom Cruise plays Stefen Djordevic (one thing Michael Chapman got right was recognizing the goods in this guy), a kid growing up in a Pennsylvania mining town where everyone knows everyone because they all work for the same soot-filled place, and very few people ever "get out."
That sets up the first crossroads of the film. Stef DOES love football, but ultimately the pigskin game is simply a means to an end. He dreams of getting out, studying engineering on a football scholarship, and making a name for himself outside the Ampipe Steel yard his father and brother have been trudging to and from everyday for decades. There's only one problem with Stef's goals: Coach Nickerson.
Craig T. Nelson is mean as a snake in this one, and he lets us know it early and often. One of the things about pics from this era is they're riotously non-PC. Nickerson uses racial slurs, grabs players physically, and demeans and shouts down youths' throats. Any one of those not only gets him fired today in the real world, but keeps the picture from ever getting off the ground in the first place. Ah, the early 80's. What a time.
Nickerson knows that he's got a stud in Stefen, but the two men are birds of a feather. Or should I say bulls ready to lock horns. This sets up the central conflict of the film. THIS is actually the heart of ATRM. Unfortunately, this is also where the film falls off for me. It wants to create real stakes for Stef and his family (and the wonderful Lea Thompson as his junior girlfriend). The wonderful cast of characters making up the football team, the games, the parties...they are all really just window-dressing. It's frustrating then when the picture constantly brings these moments of turbulence and conflict to a head, and then quickly cuts away to another sequence. It keeps the picture moving but it saps the drama at the heart of the picture of its vitality.
This was the lingering reflection in my mind. A solid editor could have done wonders with this material. Nonetheless, if I watched this film in the year of my birth, when it came out, it's probably a 3/3.5 star picture. The one football game is cool and well-rendered. The town is believable and the cast is throwing strikes (sorry to cross the sports metaphor) and game from the outset. But if you're going to sideline the sports in favor of a coach vs. player mano y mano, a selfish pride vs. young ambition showdown, then let's get into it and let it breathe.
Hot Take: Did Tom Cruise start the player empowerment era???!
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