This pre-code movie is interesting and entertaining on a few different levels. There's plenty of footage of real football games at a time when helmets were padded leather, as well as optional, and head injuries were commonplace. There's Pat O'Brien in an early, cynical, performance that's quite unlike the fatherly characters he settled into a few years later. But most of all, it's the way our expectations about what his character's fate is going to be (or should be) are shattered that makes this movie unique.
O'Brien's character hires players for his college football team, bribes professors to make certain his players have passing grades, is involved in a shady real estate deal that will pay him a fortune if a football stadium gets built, plays around with other women behind his wife's back, and directs his team to gang up on an opposing player, which results in the man's death. The wages of these sins are that in the end he wins the season, gets the stadium deal, evades any responsibility for the death of the player, gets a higher-paying job offer, and lives happily ever after with his wife. This is an amazing affirmation of the corrupt life!
It's also a pretty good movie, with O'Brien at his best.
O'Brien's character hires players for his college football team, bribes professors to make certain his players have passing grades, is involved in a shady real estate deal that will pay him a fortune if a football stadium gets built, plays around with other women behind his wife's back, and directs his team to gang up on an opposing player, which results in the man's death. The wages of these sins are that in the end he wins the season, gets the stadium deal, evades any responsibility for the death of the player, gets a higher-paying job offer, and lives happily ever after with his wife. This is an amazing affirmation of the corrupt life!
It's also a pretty good movie, with O'Brien at his best.