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**-Bianca-** · 05-09-2006, 08:05 PM

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Directors: Alex Smith & Andrew Smith, 116 min)

The story opens on a bleak Montana winter day with Roy (Ryan Gosling) saying, "My father told me if I was hard enough, I wouldn't break - he lied." Roy is trying to prove he's hard enough, dealing with the fact that his father just died and he loses the one outlet he has for releasing his anger and frustration - he gets cut from the high school football team. So when Coach Gideon Ferguson (David Morse) offers him a chance to play on his 6-man football team as the quarterback, he jumps at the opportunity. He best friend, Tracy Two Dogs (Eddie Spears), joins him on the Renegades squad and they start winning.

Coach Gideon has a secret past - a boy once died playing on his team, and he's into the "kind of love two men have for each other when their teammates", but won't admit it to anyone (not even himself) that he's gay. Roy sees through his façade, and wants to be his friend, desperately needs a father figure (actually any adult guidance, his stewardess mom (Kelly Lynch) is gone for weeks at a time), but doesn't quite know how to deal with some of the attention he gets from Gideon - it seems to come with strings attached. When Roy meets Skyla (Clea Duvall) and they start to get involved, this threatens the delicate balance between Roy and Gideon and things fall apart - for everybody. His dad really was wrong...

The "slaughter rule" refers to the mercy calling of a football game if one team gets more than 45 points behind. But there is no mercy rule in life.

Sex, alcohol, and the brutality of football - it may seem like a "guy" movie. But the relationship struggles make this accessible to all audiences. It's a little disturbing how the women are treated in this movie - they are all beaten, loved badly, or discarded. The subplot with the diabetic Floyd "Studebaker" (David Cale) is less well refined, but does give Gideon an opportunity to show his compassionate side.

Filmed on location in Montana in sub-zero conditions (love that everybody watches the football games from the comfort of their cars) - it gives the movie a reality that it needs and beautiful backgrounds and sunsets to contrast with the harshness and violence of the real world. You've got to feel sorry for the homecoming queens outside in their spaghetti-strap dresses.

Ryan Gosling turns in another terrific performance as the young man struggling to find himself - he has such a haunted look about him. Keep your eye on this guy - he's got the looks and the talent to be a star. David Morse does a great job as well as the seasoned veteran of many football battles who still is looking for his own identity. It's so sad when he admits he's never been kissed.

http://www.themoviechicks.com/taos20...ghterrule.html