Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Reno Rangan Inspired by the real story of a high school American-football coach and his team's participation in the 2004 season. The fall and rise of one of the most consistent team, especially after holding a record for the longest winning streak, what happens when it was broken unexpectedly? Do the players lose the confidence, coach be clueless, parents go crazy and media annoys them, is what neatly this film narrated. It looked nice to me and I had a good time, but it was too long and not inspiring as the other sports film based on the true events.From the director of 'Coach Carter', another decent sports film. I am not disappointed because I was not expecting to be a masterpiece, though not bad for once viewing. All the actors were good, especially it is Jim Caviezel's one of the major roles and he was amazing. American-football was always been an Americas sport, so I never interested in it except watching films based on them for inspiration. Especially after 'Conccusion', my interest on them dropped further.Whatever I said is not a reason to skip the film. As a film, it did the right thing to portray the real life achievers on the screen to boost the young sports persons. Only to me it was just an above average, but for many others, it is one of the best sports film of the year. Forget the American-football, what I liked was, achievements are good for our progress and make a career, but sometimes there's much more than making records in the games. So it's a good moral lesson film than a fine entertaining film. I won't recommend it, but definitely not a waste of time.6.5/10

Screen_Blitz Over the past several years, the sports genre has been slowly grown more and more dull as the year goes by, with many films of the genre driven by almost nothing more than common sports tropes. Fortunately, the triumphant nature of these films hasn't stop audiences everywhere from buying a ticket to see an inspiring story of a high school overcoming odds to claim their victory, and for fair reasons. When a film has a heart, it's only destiny is to win the hearts of undemanding family audience. In this case, clichéd doesn't automatically mean not entertaining. Based on true events, When The Game Stands Tall follows the story of Bob Ladouceur (played by Jim Caviezal), a long-time and soft-spoken coach of the the De La Salle High School football team in Concord, California who made legacy in American sports with a 151 game-winning streak, the biggest record ever held in the history of American sports. When tragedy strikes the team and they face a defeating loss for the first time, their faith and their dreams are put to the test where they must learn how to overcome loss and get back on their feet. Featuring a likable cast of Michael Chiklis, Alexander Ludwig, Clancy Brown, Laura Dern, Matthew Daddario, Joe Massingill, Ser'Darius Blain, Stephen James, and Richard Kohnke; this film brings together a heart-warming and inspirational tale of a football's team determination and hopefulness, while challenging a typical sports movie clichés.This movie certainly doesn't offer anything new to the table of sports-related dramas. As far as football-themed films go, this one seems to burn through nearly every cliché that many sports movies are known for, including a major plot point where a character is tragically is killed and a subplot of a family dispute relating to duty of working with a football team, how many times we seen this before? Most of the characters are barely distinguishable with the exception of Alexander Ludwig's character Chris Ryan, an eager player who suffers from emotional abuse from his father who only cares about his son's touchdown records. With all this said, the lack of innovation put into this story will likely indulge viewers into more déjà vu than inspiration. On the other hand, audience who've grown fond of sports movies won't help but pleased by the film's messages of treating your team as a family and the heart- touching story of how the team learns to overcome the obstacles that get in the way of their goals. There is also a little bit of a Christian undertone to it that will likely satisfy viewers, and the film does a great job at delivering a message about hope and teamwork without being overly preachy or forcefully shoving the message down your throat. Lastly, the performances are great to say the least. Jim Caviezel really makes a strong impression as the coach who deeply cares of his team, while trying to balance his relationship with his wife. The rest of actors do a decent job as well, though nothing particularly outstanding to speak of.When The Game Stands Tall is certainly nothing original, but it is quite entertaining and pleasing to watch. It is a film that can surely inspire viewers and fill them with great messages. Looking for a good family movie? This one is worth a try.

cormac_zoso to say this movie sucks is to say that getting run over by a bus hurts ... luckily, however, the pain involved in getting run over by a bus lasts only a few seconds (hopefully and initially) but the pain involved with this movie lasts for two hours ... i went looking for a bus about halfway thru this predictable piece of tripe ... every cliché about sports is dumped into this celluloid-crap-truck by the shovelful and reminded me of my days swamping out horse stalls by the shovelful ...you might as well go back and watch "Knute Rockne All-American", starring Pat O'Brien and some half wit hack who somehow wandered into the White House forty years later and was equally predictable and lame there as he was in this 1940 piece of crap ...if you want to sit in front of your TV and continually predict the next "plot twist" with the winner taking a shot i suppose it is functional as a drinking game ... other than that, you might as well step out in front of a hard-charging bus

SimonJack My title line above is a quote toward the end of the movie, "When the Game Stands Tall." Bev Ladouceur, wife of Coach Bob Ladouceur, says that to an angry dad in the stands who wants his son to score one more touch down to break the state scoring record. But, the coach has let the quarterback on his team call the final plays as they are winning their last game for a championship. The team is in close scoring range. Chris Ryan is the running back who can break the state record. As the team huddles, Ryan notes that the team hadn't yet shown its gratitude to the coach. He had returned to lead them through the season after having suffered a stroke. The boys take their helmets off and raise them in a salute to their coach, and the whole stadium joins in. Then, for the last three snaps, and within easy scoring range and likelihood, Ryan takes the place of the quarterback. He takes three consecutive snaps of the ball and goes down on one knee to end the game. It was a class act for the team and the boys. And that's what this movie is about, more than anything. It's a true story of a coach, Bob Ladouceur, and a school, De La Salle High School in Concord, California. They hold many football records, including the longest winning streak ever. But, most importantly, it's about teaching and shaping teen males to become men. Of course, this film has a lot of football action. So, it keeps moving at a nice pace. The film is based on a book by the same title, about Coach Bob Ladouceur and the De La Salle high school football team he led to the longest winning streak in the history of high school football. De La Salle High School at Concord, CA, won 151 consecutive games over 12 years. The early part of the movie is a snapshot of the climb of the streak, and then goes to the day the streak was snapped when De La Salle played Bellevue, WA. The bulk of the movie from there is about what happens after that, and the coach and team losing two games and then going undefeated for the rest of the next season. I agree with the other reviewers who think this may be the most inspiring sports movie ever made. And, there have been some very good ones over the years – from all major sports. Apparently, California high schools aren't divided into competition classes by size. The largest high school is Long Beach Polytech that had 4,745 students in 2013. Only five schools in its area were over 3,000 students that year. But, the schools are organized by divisions that have a mix of all size schools. De La Salle is one of 19 high schools in the Concord, CA, area (10 public and nine private). Many of those don't have football teams. Eleven high schools have fewer than 100 students and two others have fewer than 500. Only five schools have more than 1,000 students, and De La Salle is the smallest of those with 1,051 students. De La Salle competes in the state's Division 1, which has 19 schools. It is the smallest of those schools, most of which are two to three times larger than De La Salle. The largest is James Logan H.S. in Union City, with 4,133 students. The next smallest, after De La Salle, is Antioch High with 1,970 students. It's the only other high school in the division with fewer than 2,000 students, and it's still almost twice the size of De La Salle. The movie is based on Coach Ladouceur and the teams before 2004 – up to that year. That's when the school's 151-game winning streak came to an end. But, it's also when the school's comeback began. And, after that, from 2004-2013, De La Salle under Coach Bob Ladouceur went 127-12-2. It never finished outside the Top 10 in California prep football, it finished No. 1 four times and it won four state championships in a row. Bob Ladouceur stepped down in 2012 but stayed on as a volunteer to help the head coach. In his coaching career, Ladouceur had a record of 399-25-3. His record gave him a winning percentage of .937. During his career, he was offered head coach positions at the college level. All would have paid him much more than he made as a high school teacher and coach. But he turned them all down. Newspaper articles about his amazing career, said he was a teacher first. Indeed, the film brings that out. Jim Caviezel is excellent as Bob Ladouceur in this movie. All the cast are very good and the script, direction, filming and all aspects of this film are very good. This is an inspiring movie for all, and sports enthusiasts, players, and parents especially should get a lot out of the film.