Hoosiers review

 Number 702 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1986 sports-drama film 'Hoosiers.'

Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) is a washed-up, former college basketball coach who arrives in a small Indiana town to start teaching high-school basketball. To aid him, he recruits the alcoholic Shooter Flatch (Dennis Hopper). However, with the entire team dead-set against outsiders, Dale's task to train the team becomes easier said than done.

I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would, which was a surprise as I am not a basketball fan. Where this film succeeded and (arguably failed) was its focus on Dale and Shooter. Hackman and Hopper were great in the lead roles. Dale was obviously a maverick with crazy ideas. This earns him the distrust of the fellow teachers and the resentment of his students. However, he remains steadfast in his methods, grudgingly earning the respect of those around him. Despite Hackman's dismissiveness of the film's success, he performed well.

Dennis Hopper, who earned his only acting nomination from this film also performed well. He was great as the alcoholic, down-and-out Shooter Flatch. It was a stark contrast to the larger-than-life Frank Booth that he played in Blue Velvet. This role was far more human and understated. Hopper gave the character of Shooter a great vulnerability.

But while Dale and Shooter were great characters played by great actors, I cannot say the same about the rest of the cast. Many of them blurred into one including the many teachers dismissive of Dale's methods, but, in particularly, the actual basketball team. The film is about basketball so why don't we see more of the actual basketball players? Even as I'm writing this, I'm struggling to remember their names or any of their distinguishing features. There was someone called Ollie or Will who introduces himself as being too short and not very good at basketball. This begs the questions about why he is even on the team. Surely, everybody on the team has to be good. It made no sense that they would have any bad players on the team.

Moreover, there was the character of Jimmy. He is regarded as some type of wunderkund who left the team after the death of the previous coach. After much umming and urring, he finally decides to return. You think he would be a massive player, but then he fades into the rest of the team. He barely has any dialogue. It was like he was a plot device rather than an actual character.

Although the film does focus on basketball with lots of slow-motion and corny music, it needed to focus on the actual players, as much as the game itself. For me that a complete technical foul.