Tally/Reminiscing: Varsity Blues (1999)

This isn’t so much a review, but stories about how why this movie means so much to me. It means so much to because I have first hand accounts that happened to me that I can attest to which illustrate how true to life this movie really is. I grew up in a small town in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. I’d rather not say the name because the stories I’m about to tell are not very flattering.

As a high school kid growing up in this town, I could do no wrong. I could do no wrong because I played football and any wrong I did would just get thrown under the rug. I’ve heard people say this movie is ridiculous because no town would act this way. People who say this either aren’t from Texas, or don’t like football. I’ll save a little bit of time and talk about two of the biggest aspects of this movie that did not apply to me or my town. I did not have a teacher who worked as a stripper part time, and I did not have a coach who would threaten anyones future college enrollment on purpose.

Now, I had the fortunate luck to have a father that never played football, so I never faced the kind of pressure any of the kids in the movie. I’ve always been thankful for that. In fact, my favorite sport was always basketball, not high on the list of priorities for sports in the State of Texas, but I played football because I was a big guy and I was good at it. Once I played it and realized I was good at it I loved it, I was all ready to try and play in college if I had gotten the chance, but I got injured my senior year of high school. I had a great head coach in that I never lost his respect because I couldn’t play. I can’t really say the same for some of the assistant coaches who ceased to talk to me because I was no good to them anymore. The way Billy Bob is treated after his injury is true of some coaches not all, and certainly not mine.

The parties were an accurate depiction. There would always be a big “football players only” on Thursdays before games, and then after the game on Fridays, we would gather for a party that was outside the city. Parties that would have an almost unlimited amount of beer that nobody could ever figure how it was paid for cause football players certainly didn’t pay for it. It was usually paid for the former graduates who were old enough to buy beer and would still go to these parties much like the guy who got hit in the nuts with a bat. Yeah, we didn’t respect those guys either, but always thanked them for the beer.

I had a teammate like Tweeder. A guy who was an amazing talent on the football field, didn’t work particularly hard on the practice field, would fuck anything that moved, would frequently run around the locker room naked, and even one day asked another teammate “dude, look at this thing on my dick, I don’t think it’s supposed to be there” You don’t forget a thing like that.

I have a lot more stories about my life as a high school football player but I’m actually worried about people not wanting certain stories to be told. But my time as a high school football player was one of the favorite times in my life and this film is able to remind me of both the good and the bad times of that time in my life.

Tally/Blu Ray Review: Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

I really liked this movie when it came out. I had issues with the ending ultimately but overall I felt this movie was incredibly solid. The action was good, the traps were brilliant, and Butlers performance as first a distraught father, and then a genius tactician with how he killed his victims was incredible.

As a movie who’s intent is to simply entertain this movie succeeds on that front. But beyond that, the movie takes a very interesting turn when Foxx and Butler switch roles essentially as, not necessarily hero/villain, but rather more villain/anti-villain. I put it that way because in the beginning of the movie Jamie Foxx is painted as an awful human being who’s more worried about his winning percentage as a prosecutor than trying to get justice for the horrific murder of a wife and child. In portraying a lawyer, Foxx does a good job (portraying prosecutor Nick Rice) of trying to convince Butler’s character that although it doesn’t seem like it at the time, the murderer of his wife and child serving 3 years is a victory. When the story fast forwards 10 years and Clyde Shelton (Butler) is killing off anyone who had anything to do with his case, you would think that this is the point that you start rooting against Shelton and start rooting for Rice. But when Rice is asked if he would go back and reverse the deal he made with the murderer at the beginning of the film, and when he confronts Shelton in prison that they might have lost their case, you find yourself hard pressed to root for either of them and you find yourself rooting for the lesser of two evils and it’s ultimately whoever’s side you most closely relate to.

This is overall, the biggest problem with the film. It’s got great action, tremendously creative kills, but not a lot of substance, and almost no direction in letting the viewer know how they should feel when watching this.

There isn’t a lot of extras on the disc, the only featurette of note is one entitled “The Justice of ‘Law Abiding Citizen’” (6:15) which features cast and crew interviews and former L.A. Prosecutor Katie Buckland discussing the legal ramifications surrounding the initial case as depicted in the film, the difficult task for the prosecutor, the unreliability of eye-witness testimony, the role of forensic evidence, and the details of the plea bargain. It was interesting to note how they sided with Nick Rice in this movie and it adds a new element to the film that may tip your scale in Nick Rices favor as opposed to Clyde Sheltons.

In the end, as implausible as this film is, it does tackle real issues that happen in todays legal system in a day of plea bargains, immunity agreements for testimony, etc. It’s a fun film that’s more than worthy of your time, it looks great on blu ray and if you can find it for a price that’s not too out of your budget I’d say go for it and enjoy the purchase.