Gridiron Gang

The film comes out of a documentary. An Emmy-winning television documentary of the same name, made in 1992, followed Sean Porter, a probation officer at the Camp Kilpatrick juvenile facility in Los Angeles, and the American football team he built there. This is the fictionalised version. The number that drove Porter was known: seventy-five per cent of those who left Camp Kilpatrick came back. Boys from rival gangs were held in the same institution as enemies. A team was a way of putting them back inside a belonging, but along a different line. In the film too, the subject is not the games but the fact that the boys standing on the same field have shot at each other outside. Dwayne Johnson plays Porter, in one of his first roles outside action. Xzibit plays his fellow officer. Phil Joanou directed. The real Sean Porter and footage from the documentary appear at the end. Who it is for: viewers who like the sports-drama form and stories that look at the juvenile justice system. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the template to be broken. The film runs through every step of the genre in order, and focuses on one good man's effort rather than questioning the system.