[nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
Blue Chips is a 1994 sports drama about a university basketball coach who is forced to break national collegiate athletic rules in order to keep his team competitive. Directed by William Friedkin, who you probably know as the director of classics like The Exorcist (1973) and To Live and Die in LA (1985) – and if you don’t then you need to be – the guy won an Academy Award for The French Connection (1971), which is one of the best movies you’ll ever see. Shifting to an athletics film, the movie itself features several real (some soon-to-be) professional basketball players while attempting to shine a light on corruption within the sport. It ultimately didn’t do so well at the box office, despite a great script and some compelling action, mostly because it avoided the typical underdog-wins-it-all sports trope, something that nearly all in the genre end up being. However, this is a smart little film with a strong lead performance and some authentic on court action.
[/nextpage] [nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
Blue Chips stars Nick Nolte as Pete Bell, coach of the Western University Dolphins in Los Angeles and he’s got a problem. A big one. He isn’t winning anymore, something he and the program were famous for. Since the losing streak, he’s also been losing out on ‘blue chip’ prospects, players considered the best in the nation. What’s not known publicly though is that schools are secretly paying and-or bribing the players and families to have them join their teams. Initially unwilling to play this game, he eventually succumbs under pressure from others, such as Happy Kuykendahl (J. T. Walsh), a booster for the school. He soon recruits some of the best players in the game, including Neon Boudeaux (Shaquille O’Neal) and Butch McRae (Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway), each receiving high-end gifts from “friends of the program”, which leads to journalist Ed (Ed O’Neill) to start doing some digging.
[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
While the movie never really caught on, which is too bad, it’s kinda easy to see why. Not much of a sports movie in the traditional sense, it’s more about what happens off court with Bell getting more and more tangled up with his conscience and the need to win. It’s got plenty of great basketball footage with many games actually played as if for real, often in packed arenas. Shaq is good, especially since he really gets flak for his other films, mostly deservedly so, but here is solid both on and off court. However, I really like Nolte in this. He’s perfectly cast and the guy just commits to his roles, delivering again with some truly inspiring moments. He’s the whole show and should have gotten a lot more love for his work. Can’t please ’em all though. Let’s take a look at a great moment.
[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
SPOILERS: With his new roster of star players, Bell leads the team to a big win on television over number one ranked Indiana (with a cameo by legendary college coach Bobby Knight), however the guilt becomes too much. Bell’s cheated and it’s wrecked him from the inside. While the school celebrates, he takes to the press conference and unravels, beginning when Ed asks him the question that he’s been dogging Bell about from the start. Did the school secretly pay some of its players? Well, it jostles the plug in the dam and allows coach Bell to open up about his conscience and confess to the corruption of the school and himself. It shocks the capacity room and while it’s not taken quite seriously at first as reporters and alumni aren’t sure what is he is up to, when it becomes clear that the coach is exposing the school for its massive violations, things get serious. Even volatile. He not only brings down the house, he brings down the university.
[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
Nolte is just so good here, letting Bell unburden himself of the torment while berating the system for losing its focus on sport and becoming nothing but a game of money. He gets fired up, pacing on the stage back and forth, deriding the corrupt alumni and then the press, who have hounded him for a win. He delivered, he said, because it’s not about education anymore, only money. He then admits he’s part of the problem, that he bought into it, which sends Happy into a manic tirade of insults, which leads to him getting yanked out of the room by cops. This then leaves the floor open once again to Bell who goes on, chastising a system that celebrates only the cold winners and not the ambitious failures, claiming his losing team the year before was a better group of players because they at least had heart. It’s a powerful moment, made all the better by Ed O’Neill who sits in the audience watching the walls fall. Bell’s last words seals the deal.
[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
What makes this moment work is really how well it’s setup, with coach Bell agonizing over his choices and trying to keep balance with the fact that he’s got his team in all the wrong ways. The thing is, he does coach them to victory, and that’s weighing on him as well, the fact that given a team of this caliber, the school could get back on track as a leader in the sport, but doing it this way is just too much. I love the dynamic between him and Ed, an honorable journalist who knows he’s got a story but has tremendous respect for Bell. Doing the right thing can cost big but it’s far less than the price Bell’s paying to be back on top. It’s a strong message.
[/nextpage][nextpage title=”PREVIOUS” ]
Blue Chips might not have the whizbang feel good lump in your throat power of a conventional sports movie but it does have a lot to say about the game and what motivates it. Sports films are always a gamble and few really capture the energy of a “live” game, but Blue Chips, under Friedkin’s direction, does it well, led by Nolte’s impassioned work.
Images © Paramount Pictures
[/nextpage]