The Slaughter Rule (2002) User Reviews

Quirky, interesting

[sngtey · 6/10 · 20 June 2002]

Needs to be subtitled sometimes, t'was either the accent or the poor sound system. Unfortunately I'm not into any kind of sport so that does not help but now know a little bit more about American football. A good first time effort.

question

[cbjudy · 5/10 · 8 January 2006]

It must have been a bad night to try and watch this movie.Very different than I expected to say the least. My question doesn't have to go along with the main story but what was up with the mom? What was going on when Roy walked in her room and she was crying on the bed naked? Just ended with no endings for me which I find disturbing. Did I miss something with Skyla and Roy, were they to keep in touch or did she just leave. What happened with the Christmas trees and the step dad? Did two dogs end up leaving home for good? I have really enjoyed watching Ryan Goslin in movies thats why I chose this one tonight. I expected an action football movie and although not disappointed in the movie inself, just ended up confused. Any one else confused too?

Engrossing but morbidly depressing.

[Otkon · 7/10 · 14 December 2021]

This movie is well-acted. And the setting is evocative of the thematic desolation rampant throughout the story. You will not be in a blissful mood when the credits roll. So the movie does what it intends.

Football as Male Life in Cold Montana

[noralee · 18 May 2003]

I don't usually find movies first by their soundtrack, but I first heard of "The Slaughter Rule" because Jay Farrar, of the late Uncle Tupelo, did the score and song selections, including by Vic Chestnutt, the Flatlanders, and the Pernice Brothers. So I was intrigued when I saw it was on Sundance Channel as it hadn't appeared on screens in New York.

The debut jointly written/directed feature of twin brothers Andrew and Alex Smith, the film has a lot of similarity to Tom Cruise's early "All the Right Moves," even down to charismatic young star Ryan Gosling clearly being a movie star hunk of the future.

Set in the brothers' home area of rugged (and very desolate) Montana in the fall, this film takes its working class football frame of athlete seeking father figure and coach conflict much further in examining maleness and the implications of the homo-eroticism of such sports much further.

It bravely (particularly by David Morse in a touchingly agonized performance) goes into the breach of what much discussion of current scandals has avoided, at the confused nexus of pedophilia and sexual identity, particularly for teen-age boys.

There's also a dollop of racial issues via the very realistically portrayed poverty of the Native Americans.

The women are mostly helpless within this overwhelmingly male environment, and their best choice for survival is just to leave, as unromantically satisfying as that is.

This ranks in the gritty tradition of sports movies as a setting to demonstrate social tensions like "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" than more popular fare.

Interesting character study...

[natashabowiepinky · 6/10 · 17 January 2014]

This is possibly the only time I can remember where the name of a film was changed for the UK market, and I approve. After all... DRIVE TO DREAM is much better than THE SLAUGHTER RULE, dontcha think? It stars a rather young Ryan Gosling and Amy Adams in an American football themed story, which is usually the sort of thing I turn my nose at... but as long as the film concentrates on the people rather than the intricacies of the sport, I don't really care.

The most notable achievement here is in writing the coach as a believable ambiguously gay man which is no mean feat... check out the film My Brother The Devil for an example of this trope done wrong. His friendship with Goslings young hotshot (who is a bit unsure about his sexuality himself) is well done, and there are other minor triumphs of personality based conflicts throughout. A very modest work, but one which is worth your time... 6/10

Could have used some help

[S_Gautama · 4/10 · 21 February 2002]

Ok, so I saw this movie at this year's Sundance, and I was sorely unimpressed. It took a good fifteen minutes of footage before there was an edit or a line of dialogue that made any sense, and it took another 30 minutes before the ham-fisted script gave way to a working plot that wasn't contingent on a close-up of Ryan Gosling's smile or contrived moralizing. After the first 45 minutes however, the script blossomed into a watch-able albeit not completely entertaining or thought-provoking. The highlights certainly include both Gosling and Morse's acting, Gosling being an up-and-coming star, and Morse being an extremely well-established character actor with a good feel for disparate emotions. As a sidenote, after the screening I was talking a little smack about the movie to some of my friends when David Morse walked right behind me--He looks like the nicest guy in the world, but he's a solid 6'2" and probably outweighs me by 50 pounds. I removed my foot from my mouth and promptly changed the subject.

Good performances can't save a terrible script.

[ditkarrific · 2/10 · 26 April 2003]

Here's what's good about "The Slaughter Rule:"

--Ryan Gosling, Clea Duvall, and David Morse all give great performances. Gosling is, as always, pretty darn outstanding. The locales are often breathtaking.

Here's what's bad about "The Slaughter Rule:"

--Everything else. The script is horribly muddled. And while I can certainly appreciate a non-"feel good" movie, this movie is just boring. Great performances can't make-up for a movie with a stupid premise and a script that is filled with throw-away lines that often don't even make it sense. Just getting through the first hour became a chore.

I stuck with it because of Gosling, but eventually I did myself a favor and changed the channel. Spoilers on here relayed the ending to me. I didn't miss much. Do yourself a favor--if you want a good Gosling flick, check out "The Believer."

My score: 2 out of 10.

Emotional Drama! 4/10

[leonblackwood · 4/10 · 26 September 2015]

Review: Starring a young looking Ryan Gosling, Drive To Dream (The Slaughter Rule), is about a young inspiring American football player who gets cut from his team because his coach thinks that he hasn't got enough anger in his heart. With nothing to do in his small Montana town, he falls for a young girl who shows up at his dads funeral and he starts playing football for a man that he meets in a diner (David Morse). Whilst training with his new team, Roy Chutney (Gosling) starts to hear rumours about Gideon's (Morse) past which questions there close friendship. His relationship with Skyla (Clea Duvall) is also under pressure because she doesn't really feel love from the troubled teenager. After a few games on the road, the team doesn't really progress into anything special because they don't really gel together that well and there coach (Morse) has his own personal demons to deal with. I quite enjoyed this emotional drama which was made with a small budget, before Rosling became the mega-star that he is today. His distant acting style worked well with this role and David Morse was brilliant as his father figure/coach but it does seem like it was made for TV. Its always good to see these massive Hollywood stars older movies to see if they can actually act, which Gosling proved that he can. His style hasn't changed that much but he has covered many other genres since this film. Its a watchable movie which does have different elements to keep the movie interesting but it's very one toned without that much substance. Its worth a watch just to see Gosling at a young age but from a entertaining prospective, it's very average.

Round-Up: This movie was made when Gosling, 34, had just starred in Remember the Titans, which was a small role and the Believer which didn't go down well with audiences. He really became a household name after starring in the Notebook, which became a worldwide hit. Since then, he has starred in some decent movies like Stay, Fracture, Half Nelson, Blue Valentine and Drive. He then turned to comedy in Crazy, Stupid Love, were he showed off his impressive abs and became the love of women all around the world and then he went back to his usual moody movies in the Place Beyond the Pines, Gangster Squad and the weird Only God Forgives. He has chosen to stay out of the limelight for a while but he will be coming back soon in movies like the Bladerunner remake, the Haunted Mansion, the Big Short starring Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Steve Carrell and the Nice Guys with Russell Crowe. This film was directed by Alex & Andrew Smith who have only made a couple of shorts before making this small movie. They really did get the most out of Gosling & Morse in this emotional drama and you can tell that they relied on the script more than fancy shots and extravagant scenery. This isn't a feel good movie and there are some depressing scenes but the actors did give it there all and it's good to see how far Gosling has come.

Budget: $500,000 Worldwide Gross: N/A

I recommend this movie to people who are into their emotional dramas about a promising teenage football player who gets dropped from his team and plays in a small league in his town, with his father figure coach. 4/10

A Compelling Story Beautifully Told

[Pink_Floyd_Fan_95 · 8/10 · 13 July 2007]

This movie has recently been playing on Showtime in my area and I was interested in watching it because I am a fan of both Ryan Gosling and David Morse. I first became a Ryan Gosling fan after seeing him in The Notebook. I have to say his performance in this film did not disappoint. David Morse's performance was one of his best. After reading all the comments and replies here I just wanted to add some of my thoughts about the film and what I felt the filmmakers were going for.

First of all, I am not a fan of movies that are neatly bundled into a happy ending by the end of the film. I like those films that portray life as it really is and that make you THINK. The most memorable aspect of this film, indeed the most heartbreaking, is Gid's torment and loneliness in life. I don't think he was gay, just a lost soul looking for acceptance, friendship, indeed reciprocal love if you will, and a sense of purpose in life. Roy's character seemed to be looking for most of the same things. He had a father who wasn't there for him in life and a mother so bitter over the divorce that she was too busy trying to find love of her own to take the time to nurture her own son.

I found the comments regarding the relationship between Gid and Studebaker very interesting re: were they homosexuals? Just because two men form a friendship in life doesn't mean they are gay. To me, Studebaker's jealousy over Gid's interest in Roy is just a natural human emotion. Haven't you at times been jealous when a friend of the same sex showed interest in someone new? Does that make you gay? Also, it doesn't seem there was anyone else in the town who gave a damn about him (Studebaker) so any threat to that bond frightened him. Their friendship was most likely just that of two lost souls trying to get by in life. It made me think so much more of Gid that he did not pass judgement on Studebaker -- he cared enough about his well being to try to stop his drinking, to give him his insulin injections, to try to get a room for him at the shelter on that last bitterly cold night.

The scene in which Gid is hugging Roy and won't let go was very powerful. Roy, who had been told by others that Gid was gay, must have had that thought foremost in his mind and misinterpreted Gid's demonstration of affection. Perhaps Gid, remembering that Roy had just lost his father, wanted to show him that he is not alone, that there are people in the world who really care. Perhaps Roy reminded Gid of the boy who drowned and he was transferring his feelings of guilt over that tragedy into that embrace. For whatever the reason, Roy's embarrassment which quickly progressed to rage that Gid might be demonstrating some sort of homosexual intent, are a damning indictment of our society. Homophobia at it's worse.

The scene in the hospital at the end of the movie when Gid takes Roy's hand and places it on his forehead was very moving. Roy did not pull his hand away; instead, in this simple, gentle gesture, the filmmakers were showing us that Roy had overcome his fear of demonstrating affection toward another as well as overcoming any homophobic thoughts he might have had about Gid.

The acting was first rate all around. Compelling story line. Beautiful Montana scenery. Sound quality not the best but I would definitely recommend this film to others.

Terrible Filth

[future_citizen · 1/10 · 31 March 2013]

This movie is offensive on many levels. The acting and directing makes this movie feel like a straight-to-TV movie. Except I wouldn't deem this movie suitable for a television audience. How tiresome is the theme of movies where the main characters are High Schoolers. The High School children are portrayed as adults ultimately. The movie showcases underage drinking as being normal and acceptable behavior. And it's full of underage High School children engaging in sexual activity. Showing High School children having sex is ultimately child pornography without nudity. These movies about High School kids drinking and having sex are so crude that the fictional High School characters portrayed wouldn't even be allowed to rent this movie themselves in real life. And to top all of this lewd behavior off, the adult main character is some creeper psycho who watches High School football games by himself and then trespasses into the High School to retrieve the names of the boys who didn't make the Varsity team and goes around town stalking them to recruit them onto his fantasy boys football team. I found myself watching this movie from an observational objective viewpoint just to study the type of mainstream Hollwood filth that gets fed into the minds of the masses who are conditioned to perceive what I consider to be filthy smut as normal.

A Poignant display of loss, recovery, and redemption.

[goathaven1 · 10/10 · 14 June 2002]

The Slaughter Rule is one of the few unique films that captivates the viewer straight from the opening sequence. The film opens with a haunting shot, as twin brothers Alex and Andrew Smith take there camera through a barb-wire fence to reveal a helpless dying deer, literally struggling for its every last breath of life. Enter Roy Chutney, a high school student who is cut from the varsity football team just three days prior to losing his estranged father. Much like the deer, Roy never gives up in his struggle to live his life in wake of tragedy, even after losing just about everything that held meaning in his young adulthood. Roy is eventually approached by the local paper distributor Gideon (played with remarkable passion and sustain by the brilliant David Morse). Gideon asks Roy to join his roughneck 6-man football team. Upon joining, Roy is taken under Gideon's wing and must eventually confront the small-town rumors that linger regarding Gideons sexuality, and turbulent past. The Slaughter Rule is unlike any high school football movie ever made. First of all, the film omits any of the standard hallway and classroom scenes that frequent every other film of the genre, It also discards the glorified high school football stadiums that almost give the impression they could be home to the next super bowl. Instead the scenes in this film are mainly set in country bars, private bedrooms, and cold icy fields, where the viewer can almost feel themselves being slammed into the frozen tundra alongside the players themselves. Where most football movies feature strong, good-looking, "prom king" type players, The Slaughter Rule uses gritty, "normal-looking" kids, that could easily be seen tossing the pigskin around in any small middle American town. Eric Edwards stunning cinematography, and alt/country musician Jay Farrar's folk influenced score, help make The Slaughter Rule one of the most promising directorial debuts in recent years, and was by far the best film I saw at the 2002 Lake Placid Film Festival. I strongly urge anyone who has ever experienced loss from death or rejection, to watch this film. For those of you who have not, pull that letterman jacket out of the closet and rent Varsity Blues.

Jesse Haven is a 19 year old film student from Burlington, Vermont Questions or comments?? Email me

Underrated Effort

[B24 · 9/10 · 14 January 2003]

As a subscriber to Sundance Channel, I am intrigued by recurrent programming patterns in the films shown. Recently, for example, there has been a spate of male-oriented psycho-sexual dramas that go deeply into themes usually represented in mainstream cinema as subconscious or accidental phenomena.

In The Slaughter Rule as well as other recent offerings like L.I.E. or Priest or Taboo (originally Gohatto), characters reveal emotions that seem designed specifically to break new ground in the amorphic area between ordinary storytelling and what some would call pornography. The common word to describe this is "disturbing." But just as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Midnight Cowboy, and Harold and Maude opened people's eyes in the 60's and 70's to the possibilities of "disturbing" cinema as literature, these new films may lead in my view to an entirely new public attitude about the inherent validity of the effort.

To be sure, The Slaughter Rule is a flawed film. So are many others of its kind to date. Its premise, however, is sound. One can nitpick about cinematic values, geographical anomalies, or plot distractions, etc., but to be able to see disparate fictional characters get under each other's skin is what makes any drama come to life. Added to that in this case is a very competent job of producing, directing, and editing. Moreover, no one can quarrel with the acting performance of David Morse.

Coming to grips with overtly sexual themes in films -- particularly those that deal seriously with "disturbing" but very real kinds of human emotions -- is a challenging task not only for moviemakers like the Smiths, but also for viewers. I give this movie an "E" for effort and a solid 9 out of 10 for everything else.

Morse Was Terrific

[baho2 · 8/10 · 25 May 2002]

I must have been standing next the to the last reviewer in the hallway (at the Park City Library) at Sundance. Morse walked by along with the directors. I managed to corral Andrew Smith and ask him about the movie. (These directors LOVE to talk about their work.)

First of all, this is not a great movie, and may never be fit for the mass market. But it is, I think, a good movie and a very powerful and thought-provoking one. My initial reaction, which I passed onto Smith, was that I was moved by the internal conflict in this unusual coming-of-age story. What kind of man is Gosling going to become? How will he deal not just with the peer pressures and love interests, but with societal prejudices and the essence of humanity, compassion and kindness. Interestingly, I learned that an early tagline considered for the film was something like "What makes a man?"

David Morse's performance is absolutely incredible in this movie. I spoke to a film critic about it and he said he thought Morse was the best American actor that no one has heard of. It is an extremely challenging and enigmatic role that he plays with a poignant, compelling and believable complexity. I was at the same time deeply moved, repulsed, angered and sympathetic. I was reminded that there is good and bad in all of us, and that the demons within are part of the essence of humanity.

Maybe too deep and philosophical for a movie about 8-man football. And that's just it--it's a situational contrast that's unexpected and jarring. If you ever get a chance to see this film, grab it.

A very good film

[Nedzel · 10/10 · 27 January 2003]

I thought this was a great movie. The script and the cast are very strong. I personally think a sign of a good movie is that it takes me somewhere I've never been, shows me characters I've never seen before, in situations I don't ever expect to be in, and lets me totally understand what they are experiencing. Regarding the comment from RitchCS in Ft. Lauderdale that the film is only showing on the Sundance Channel, it is playing this week in Chicago at Facets Multimedia so it may in other "art house" theaters around the country. Catch it if you can!

An interesting study of relationships

[Silence91 · 8/10 · 7 May 2003]

"The Slaughter Rule" is an interesting, moving study of male relationships, with the movie portraying how the limits of male bonding are tested through past and natural emotion. Ryan Gosling is deep and effective as a teenage jock who's life has seen it's rocky roads, and then he meets a quiet, mystifying older man who wants to recruit him for a six man football team. What Gosling doesn't know is about the Man's past, which turns out to test their growing relationship. It's an often slow but alluring tale, absorbing you in to the story of characters that are both familiar and alien, and ending up with an odd but truthful ending that pulls out all the raw, closeted emotions that the two men have for each other, and it's home-movie-style video shoot and beautiful country scenery brings it to life.

Extremely Uncomfortable...in a good way...

[IndieKing · 25 April 2003]

This is a prime example of a flick that breaks all the rules and is still damn good. You always hear filmmakers blather on about how they work their own way, and then you see their junk and think that maybe they should have read a book. This is not one of those times. it's an intense look into sports and rural life and how they interplay with one another in the Midwest.

I was drawn to it by the title, and although it is about football, i could totally relate because when i played Youth baseball, I was on a team so bad one year that literally half of our games were called off early.

Not that this has to do totally with sports, it is more about male relationships, as Roy, the lead character deals with the death of his father through his participation in six-man football. As the story unfolds, he is cut from his own team and hooks up with a new team coached by a strange outsider played by David Morse. he starts off just being intense, but then becomes creepy (there is a homoerotic undertone between coach and player). Ryan Gosling, who plays Roy is solid and Morse is terrific. This ain't "Remember The Titans" but still very much worth checking out. It got good press at this past year's Sundance Film Festival.

Amongst Male Compassion

[Rick-8 · 10/10 · 16 March 2003]

Love is difficult no matter what relationships are binded together. However, male bonding can be the most difficult and fraught with anxiety. To find love among men means weakness in parts of our society. "The Slaughter Rule" converges on that dilemma within an archetypal framework of male sports.

Superb casting is generated in the chemistry between the mature teenager Roy Chutney (Ryan Gosling) and adolescent adult Gideon Ferguson (David Morse), who wrangle on the dangerous edge of pederasty. Not finding true love with women, Gid searches and grasps for intimacy the only way he has known: football. Roy subconsciously searches for the father he never really had, getting a little more than he bargained for in return.

In bleak blizzard landscapes and amid hard scrabble lives, the Smith brothers and their camera freeze on the action, whether on the playing fields or the local restaurant or honky tonk. Beautifully photographed in Montana and containing wonderfully written dialogue, one feels they have known the characters for a long, long time. They embody flesh, blood, bones, brains, guts, heart, and love.

Interesting but poorly executed

[JakersWild · 24 May 2003]

Sometimes technical flaws can get in the way of what otherwise could have been a good story. These movie's flaws prevented me from enjoying it much.

First, two key deleted scenes from the start of the film leave the entire premise feeling hollow. The scenes are offered as a special feature on the DVD. If I were to watch this movie again, I'd play these two deleted scenes where they should have been. First, the scene deleted after the conversation about the teen's father that opens the movie. Second, just minutes later the continuation of a scene talking with the coach in his office.

This has been a growing trend, for directors to cut key scenes that explain things at the start of the movie. In at least commentary tracks directors have said they 'just wanted to get on with the movie'. Well of course they might, since they know the story intimately. The viewer won't, and could use the background to make an emotional connection to the movie. Unless the movie is past the two hour mark, why consider cutting valuable scenes?

Gosling and some of the other performances were great. Of course Gosling does great even in rotten movies like Murder By Numbers.

The wide screen was an overly wide aspect, I guess meant to highlight those beautiful outdoor scenes over the actors. It leaves barely enough room for actors' heads in places, and it made the brief shower scene no fun at all. To echo another comment, the sound was very poor in places. More than accents, it was bad mixing where sound jumped from soft whisphers to loud music then back. My finger ended up fiddling with the volume throughout.

In hindsight, I might watch The Slaughter Rule once, but it won't be worth watching even a second time.

Surprisingly special

[cheitman23 · 8/10 · 18 February 2003]

This is not a movie that will make one feel warm inside or good about humanity. The motives of the characters, and their actions, are often disturbing. But I found a great deal to appreciate in the effort that the writer and the actors brought to this. Along the lines of "Chuck and Buck" or the "Good Girl" in it's power to stay with you and make you think about people and things you might

not want to! I saw a film today called "Igby Goes Down" with A list stars and a relatively high budget that was extremely pompous and made no effort to

communicate. This small film easily outshines it on every level. I grew up in rural South Dakota and Minnesota and football is that serious a business there, and there are as many disturbing elements and people around this "heartland" as

anywhere else. Extra thanks to Ryan Gosling (who has been good in everything

so far) David Morse and Clea DuVall for their great efforts here.

A little behind the scenes info!

[Miss S · 5 June 2003]

Having this movie shot in my hometown (Great Falls, Montana), I answered a local casting call for extras. Blink and you'll miss me in the bonfire/party scene. My high school (Great Falls High) was the school used in the beginning of the film, and the locker room the team is in happens to be the girl's locker room. David Morse's character lives above a vacuum place downtown. The hospital in the movie used to actually be the old Colombus hospital, but is now a office building.

The twins in the movie (Matt and Paul Pippinich), I went to school with for 7 years, and that old orange truck is theirs. Matt played clarinet in a dixieland jazz band.

When I saw this movie at the Wilma theater in Missoula, MT, one of the directors was there to answer questions. He said that they chose Great Falls (pop. approx. 60,000) for shooting "because it was sort of the town that time forgot." In some ways, this is true, but the city is not as run down and rural as it appears in the movie.

Overall, I found myself enjoying this movie more for the "hey, I know him!" or "I lived 2 miles from there" situations. While this wasn't a movie that I would want to watch repeatedly, I still highly suggest it for rental. It's more than just a "sports" movie.

Also, a stellar soundtrack that makes the movie that much better.

Moody film with gripping characters that move the film.

[michaelmartinez · 8/10 · 9 September 2005]

This movie's tone captures the atmosphere that fuels the main characters' angst and ennui. There are characters that seem purposely written vague as a story devise. Things revealed about them make this devise effective. One teen's survival seems to be the salvation for so many. But the main character is not a Christ figure. Gosling has played this type of character before -- Trapped between doing the right thing and rebelling against himself ("The Believer"). A gripping character study. David Morse continues to demonstrate his versatility. And the cinematography paints the bleak surroundings that inform the consciousness of Gosling's character. Clea Duvall gives good misunderstood-tortured-soul, and the secondary characters were all appropriately shallow and callous. There was no effort to break ground with this film. But the filmmakers did manage to capture ordinary moments, pause over them and offer some insights. No one will mistake this for the Coen brothers, but they, too, started with basic ideas and developed a unique style of film-making that was shaped by their early experiences and the story arc of their own maturation. Small films like this are a luxury for young actors, most of who are pushed to become silver screen icons as a heartthrobs, action muscle or totally irreverent rakes. Gosling -- for one -- is getting an opportunity to hone his skills as a character actor and cane likely find work no matter what the genre. Morese also will not hurt for work and Duvall has shown that she rises above the roles she's asked to play. I think there is more good work to come for all of them. There is should be more good work from these filmmakers as well. How they handle more complex material will be the next thing to watch for.

a few good elements but weak overall

[Buddy-51 · 28 June 2004]

Despite the novelty of its setting, 'The Slaughter Rule' is a fairly conventional coming-of-age tale about a boy who grows into manhood by becoming a member of a ragtag six-man football team. Roy is a teenager trapped in a small Montana town whose life has not been going any too well of late. His father, with whom he had only the most casual of relationships, has been discovered dead on a railroad track, a possible suicide victim. His mother, embittered by their divorce, sleeps around with countless men and has no real inclination to provide her son with any but the most cursory form of maternal affection. On top of all this, Roy has just been rejected for the school's varsity football team because the coach finds him lacking in the kind of 'anger' he feels a player needs to be a success on the gridiron. When Roy is asked by Gid, a somewhat eccentric older man in the town, to come join his six-man football team, the youth only reluctantly acquiesces (six-man football is a near rule-less poor relation to the real game, one ostensibly only played by farm boys). It is at this point that Roy's growth into manhood begins, since it turns out that the enigmatic Gid, who one assumes will be merely a father figure for the affection-starved youth, may be seeking more than just a father/son, athlete/coach relationship with the boy.

This latent-homosexual subtext, in fact, is just about the only element that separates 'The Slaughter Rule' from countless other films in this genre. Most everything else about the film feels derivative and stale: the emotionally distant parents, the promiscuous, psychologically detached mother, the abusive stepdad, the sweet girl who wants to flee this hicksville town as fast and as far as a bus ticket can take her. Towards the end, especially, the filmmakers start to pile up the heartbreaks and tragedies, one on top of the other, almost to epic proportions. One wonders how so much can happen in so short a time to so small a group of people. In the almost two hour running time of the film, only the ambiguity of the Roy/Gid relationship arouses any real interest in the viewer.

Ryan Gosling is tremendously appealing as the troubled Roy, and David Morse (the father in 'Contact') turns Gid into a nicely sympathetic figure. The starkness of the Montana landscape also provides an appropriate backdrop for the bleak melodrama that is playing itself out in the foreground. Apart from these few quality elements, however, there isn't a whole lot else to commend in 'The Slaughter Rule.'

THis film is extraordinary!!!

[nm1649096 · 10/10 · 21 November 2006]

sadly this film is a diamond lost in a coal mine. No one I know has heard about it. But it is SOOOO AMAZING THAT after 2 minutes of it airing at 3am (despite the fact I have to sleep and work in a couple hours!!!)I could not stop watching. By far David Morse GREATEST performance ever as well as quite possibly one of Ryan Goslings best as well. Both leave any actor watching, with the utmost inspiration for developing ones own craft. Definitely performances to aspire to in any actors career. If this film is a testament to the Smith Brothers ability to direct actors, it certainly leaves no reservations in my mind! Hopefully one day I will be fortunate enough to work with such talents.

Growing pains

[Chris Knipp · 19 March 2003]

"Slaughter Rule" is a first-time Sundance film by the twins Andrew and Alex Smith that stars Ryan Gosling and David Morse, with an excellent cast featuring Kelly Lynch, Clea Duvall, Eddie Spears and David Cale. Photography in unusual two-strip widescreen format Cinemascope is by Eric Edwards, who shot "My Own Private Idaho," and some of the Montana landscapes have that same poetry, but this time the focus is on a dead-end town heading into winter.

Roy Courtney (Ryan Gosling), a high school football player, gets one bad piece of news after another. His estranged father has been run over by a train and killed, perhaps a suicide. Right after the funeral he gets cut from the team. Then he meets a seedy roving six-man football coach named Gideon (David Morse) who sells late edition newspapers, sings in a bar, and looks out for the diabetic town drunk, Studebaker, who seems to be more than just a pal. When they meet in a bar, Gideon, who mysteriously knows all about him, insists that Roy is his next star quarterback.

Gid's hard sell and excessive charm already make us suspicious. The trouble is (and that's just one more of a string of downbeat events to come) that rumor has it Gid likes boys, and that one of them died with him when he was elsewhere in the state. It's a tough tradeoff to accept this guy as your coach just to play the game, but Roy is desperate to play football and to have an adult male mentor in his life.

It feels like this could have been a powerful movie: it does have some powerful scenes. Both Gosling and Morse turn in complex and interesting performances that enliven their strained relationship, but there is little to admire in the screenplay, which meanders too much and is too downbeat. Clea Duvall has moments, but only that, as Roy's older girlfriend, a bartender. Eddie Spears as Tracey, Roy's Indian best buddy and fellow football player, has good looks and charm to burn, but aside from glimpses of a lousy family and abusive father he has little background and not much of a developmental role to play in Roy's life.

The central scene is a tussle in Gid's rundown room when he gets Roy in a bear hug and can't let go. This is where his uneasy repressed sexuality comes out and Roy's horror of it is stimulated. David Morse bites down hard on his juicy role and Gosling, who later was to show his electric energy and boldness in both "The Believer" and "Murder by Numbers," is mercurial and kaleidoscopic in his range of emotions throughout the movie, from hard and aggressive to soft and vulnerable. If only Gosling didn't have that reedy, Mickey Mouse Club look and spiky hair he would have all the material to be a major star. He is a major acting talent. He's a risk taker with great presence and it's a crime that there isn't even a US video or DVD of "The Believer" out yet.

One trouble with the direction of "Slaughter Rule" is that, partly in an effort at authenticity, dialogue is often throwaway. There are lost lines in every scene and after a while you get used to not really following completely.

The situation generated by Gideon is uncomfortable and the movie never resolves our discomfort; it just worries with it, and carries it from scene to scene.

The team does well at first, but things look worse and worse as the weather gets colder and the coach seems odder and odder. Roy clings to him out of the desperation of need, for want of anything better. He clings to his girlfriend but she rejects him when he seems too immature to her and shows that he doesn't connect sex with intimacy. Before long she leaves town on a bus and Roy just manages to say goodbye. It's another good moment for Gosling, but the relationship hasn't been rounded out and is just dropped.

Football games have been done to death with all kinds of slickness, and usually they end with the traditional agonizingly obvious, achingly suspenseful last minute win for our hero's team. That kind of cliché is avoided here, but while many football movies are too slick, here the game sequences are sloppily edited and too halfhearted and anticlimactic to engage real interest.

Does this movie have to be so persistently downbeat? Roy's initial misfortunes are only the beginning. His relationship with Gid is clearly doomed. He only gets a girlfriend in order to lose her. Studebaker, Gid's sad pal, dies in a car. Then in the final game Roy's best mate Tracy gets his neck broken. This game initiates a desperate, drawn out finale. Gid invokes a metaphorical "slaughter rule," a rule of six-man football that if one team gets far head, the other resigns to avoid needless bloodshed. His point is that they're worn down and that without Tracy they haven't a chance. "A strong man knows when to walk away." But Roy yells and screams to egg the team back into the game, calling Gid a wimp and finally a queer. He drives off in his truck without giving Gid his usual ride and Gid wanders off into the tundra as if to die. But Roy goes back and rescues him, we see him and Tracy in the hospital, and Roy walks off into the sunset seemingly happy. It's all very unsatisfying -- a string of anticlimaxes without focus, without the sense of an ending.

For all the unhappy events and soul searching that occur, nothing is ever resolved. What makes the screenplay weak aside from its meandering pace is that secondary characters like Studebaker and Roy's mom aren't at all developed. Another curiously missing element is school. Roy is a high school student, yet we never once see him go near a school or pick up a book. This is where you miss a good writer about teenagers like the Eighties' S.E. Hinton, who would have made the boy's social and daytime existence, classmates and friends come vividly to life. Instead of doing what high schoolers actually do, Roy spends all his time at bars or practice, a pretty odd combination especially since at his father's funeral he refused a drink because he was in training. Six-man football seems to be all consuming, especially when your coach has sexual problems, but not demanding enough to require avoiding hangovers.

Gosling is impressive, but the movie lacks the focus for his talents that "The Believer" provides. An experienced, charismatic supporting player, David Morse gives his all in his lead role as Gideon, but without a sharply defined plot his confused character flounders and seems overwrought

Fantastic performances! Finally a real film out there...

[leparrain5 · 8/10 · 11 April 2003]

I really enjoyed this film in every way, I am a city boy and this heartland story really was wonderful even for a city kid like myself. The acting is excellent to say the least, it's moving, and gets your blood flowing, it's simply real. First time I've ever seen Ryan Gosling's work and he was fantastic, wow this kid is like 22 years old and what a performance. Everyone is great in this one, David Morse is fantastic as well. David Cale another strong acting job here, Clea DuVall is amazingly graceful and poetic in her role... I wish I could see these actors more and more and in parts as strong as in this film. I can't say more, thanks for a wonderful film.