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Taking it the Distance Favorite Movie Quote: "Hit the tight end so hard his girlfriend dies." I suspect that it will be a life-long personal boggle that I've never heard anyone else admit that The Program is the football movie. There are other great movies with football in them, but only one has taken on football in such a way as to show what it's all about - both the demons it exposes, and the love and passion that it inspires. Rather than cynical crap that seems to posit that there is nothing good in sports, professional or otherwise, like Any Given Sunday, The Program is an objective fiction about the highs and lows of competitive sports. The Program chronicles a year on and around the campus of the fictional ESU Wolfpack collegiate football program, from their season-ending loss of the year prior through the final game that will seemingly determine the fate of each pivotal character. There's the alcoholic Heisman hopeful, quarterback Joe Kane (Craig Sheffer) and his life-line girlfriend Camille (Kristy Swanson), the freshman runningback from the wrong side of the tracks, Darnell Jefferson (Omar Epps) and the object of his desire Autumn Haley (Halle Berry), and Head Coach Sam Winters (James Caan), standing on the middle of a ethics see-saw between doing what's right and what's best for the program. Supporting are numerous capable b-list actors filling out the rest of the team, many with their own issues and lesser story arcs. The Program is dense and, with as many story and character elements that are present, the entire thing should collapse under its own weight. Instead, Director David S. Ward manages to give each of the storylines as much attention as it deserves, masterfully intertwining each to conclusions ranging from sad to euphoric as the characters learn or suffer for their failure to do so. One of the things that stand out is that not every ending is a happy one, and not all the happy ones are perfect or predictable; in general, the endings are balanced, fair, and realistic, something that most movies usually eschew in favor of all or nothing. The Program is complex and expertly crafted. The game sequences are the foremost in both quality and quantity, the acting ranges from believable to great, and the subject matter was ahead of its time and still topical today. Long after the box-office tally was decided, I'm still rooting for The Program. email this review to a friend
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