Hoosiers Film A Great Sports Moive

Hoosiers Film is an American  Great Sports film. This awesome movie is about a coach with a checkered past and a local drunk train a small-town high school basketball team to become a top contender for the championship.

Hoosiers Movie Cast

Hoosiers Movie Review

Hoosiers came out in 1986 and its star Gene Hackman as a basketball coach trying to get away from a checkered past.

Despite having coached college basketball he takes a job in Indiana coaching a high school basketball team, and over the course of a very unpredictable season leads them to greatness.

This film is directed by David Anspaugh, but he later made Rudy another very inspiring sports film with the same writer and another score from Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith provided an excellent score for this movie which was Oscar-nominated.

He clearly understands inspiring sports movies and Hoosiers is one of my favorite sports films ever.

This film has so much heart. Every time I watch the film, I am on the verge of tears for almost the entire runtime.

There are so many scenes especially with Dennis hopper’s character who plays a drunk father of a son on the team.

He’s the embarrassment of his son who is always trying as hard as he can on the court and academically.

So later in the film, Hackman decides the best way to get this guy sober is to offer him an assistant coaching job with the stipulation that if he ever shows up drunk for a game he’s immediately out of a job.

And that’s where the film gets even more inspiring.

The film is smart and that it’s not just about a coach who’s trying to with a bunch of boys into shape just really aren’t that good at basketball can’t work together anymore.

It’s about a man trying to recover from alcoholism. It’s about a lonely teacher who’s been taking care of the best basketball player in the area and feels like her life has suddenly halted and that you’ll never get out of this place.

And it’s about a coach that feels like the whole town is against him. Especially since the first few roles that he instigates are very confusing to the town. This is a town where basketball is extremely important to it.

It’s god and basketball as far as this town is concerned and so when Jerry Goldsmith comes in there and says you can’t even shoot the ball until you’ve passed at least 4 times, everyone’s very confused by that. And they even try to vote him out of the job.

Nowadays storyline like this feels very formulaic. They’ve been many film sense and some before where a gruff guy comes into a school whether he’s a teacher or a coach and there’s a bunch of players or students who just don’t really work together and they’re failing at academics or in athletics and eventually you’re going to be inspired in some way usually the town is against that individual perhaps will be a town hall meeting of some kind.

And we’ve seen things like that in films like Coach Carter or Remember The Titans which are both good films. Remember The Titans actually being a great film I think.

But when Hoosiers came out, these storylines weren’t as familiar and a lot of films have taken inspiration from it.

Gene Hackman is very very good in Hoosiers despite clashing with the director considerably. Apparently, the director even had anxiety attacks sometimes.

Fearing working with Hackman because Hackman legitimately thought this movie was going to be a disaster.

He actually thought it was going to end his career. I can’t imagine thinking that about this film now, but I suppose at the time he just wasn’t seen what was happening in front of him.

According to the IMDb trivia after seeing a rough cut of the film Gene Hackman came into the room took his glasses off and said how the hell did you do that.

Which I find really entertaining and I love that he was able to at least admit that. Because obviously the film was a boost for his career at the time.

Because if you look at the films he was making after Superman and Superman too and then to Hoosiers, there’s not much going on there. This film really helped him actually.

But Dennis Hopper is the shining star of this movie. He was Oscar-nominated for his role and there are scenes with him that are so so painful and he gives such a real performance.

It doesn’t feel showy. Even in the films showy is seen where he’s stumbling onto the basketball court to drunk in front of everyone, it doesn’t feel like he’s playing for the audience.

Apparently, he would spin around multiple times before it takes just, so we could get that feeling of what he might feel like if he was inebriated.

And he’s excellent in the film, and he’s one of the biggest reasons that I often cried during this movie like a child.

The basketball action is also really well filmed. It looks realistic. It doesn’t feel like they’re being big just to be big for the movie.

And as already stated Jerry goldsmith’s score is really excellent. It really pumps you up. It’s a great workout score. It’s very inspiring music. I really miss hearing new music from that man.

There are only a few things about the movie that isn’t as strong as everything else. There isn’t anything about the movie that I would say doesn’t work. It’s just that some elements kind of fall by the wayside.

The romance between Barbara Hershey and Gene Hackman, is natural and it develops slowly and there’s a nice evolution to it.

But I don’t know that it adds much to the narrative. I feel like it’s just something that a lot of films at the time felt like they had to have a blossoming romance of some kind along with the rest of the drama.

I don’t know the film needs it, but I don’t really think it takes away from anything. And that’s just me being NIT picky, which is kind of a necessity.

This is always been one of my favorite sports movies and if you’ve never seen it, I would highly recommend it.

I’m gonna give Hoosiers an A.

Guys thank you so much as always for watching I’m going to have some more sports reviews coming for you very soon. See you next time.