North Dallas Forty

Phil Elliott is an ageing receiver on a professional football team. He takes pills to get out of bed, gets injected before games, and nobody will tell him the real state of his knee. To the management he is not an athlete but an asset still usable. The subject is not the game but the athlete entering the accounts as property. The hardest line comes from an executive who says this is not a game, it is business. Elliott's entire problem is refusing to believe it. The form is realistic and untidy. Locker room talk, plane journeys and parties are crowded and overlapping; the scenes on the field are a small part of the film. The source is Peter Gent's novel. Gent had actually played for the Dallas Cowboys and the book draws on his own experience; it caused real discomfort in American football when it appeared. The film met the same reaction and the league would not cooperate with the production. Nick Nolte leads, with Mac Davis as the quarterback and Charles Durning as the coach. Ted Kotcheff directs. Who it is for: viewers who like the dark side of sports films and seventies American cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting the thrill of a game; the film is barely interested in the sport itself.