Boring, long, and too preachy.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I was drawn to this documentary, not just because as a native Philadelphian the majority of Army-Navy games were played in my city as the traditional half-way point between Annapolis and West Point, but also because of the enormous respect we should all hold for the service academies and their students, their honor code, their high intellectual standards, their leadership qualities, and their rigorous physical and academic programs. With the exception of Roger Staubach and a few others less famous, most football players at the military academies don't end up in the NFL. That's because, at least in the past, the academies had strict height and weight parameters to keep the corps of cadets and midshipmen looking more or less uniform. What they lacked in size as a disadvantage on the football field they had to make up for with speed and smarts. So I was disappointed to see in the documentary fat linemen like on any ordinary college football team. And I was doubly disappointed by the frequent dropping of the F-Bomb by some of the players. I rarely agreed with what President Obama had to say about anything, but he was absolutely accurate when in this documentary he called the cadets and midshipmen our nation's finest. I just expected better from our nation's finest as far as their language, and by the examples of unsportsmanlike conduct depicted in the film. Finally, while the documentary did admirably show some scholar athletes on both teams, a few of the other players heard speaking sounded as dumb as rocks. How they were able to gain admission to these fine institutions - except to play football - is anybody's guess.

I can't believe this movie does not have all kinds of rave reviews. We watched it last night and we all were really surprised and liked it very much. It was much more than a football movie and we almost didn't watch it because of that. In fact, they could have left out the football story and still had a great documentary. Not that I think they should have. The parts that I found most interesting were about the schools, what the students go through and their families. In fact, I would have enjoyed more about them. If you have any interest in the military, West Point, Annapolis or college football, then do not miss this movie.

Game of Honor, A (2011) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Extremely entertaining documentary taking a look at the rival football game between Army and Navy. Most sports documentaries might dig into the history of the rival, the fans hatred of each other or some sort of other events but this one here is quite different because the players themselves are different. We see the full 2011 season for the two squads but the football stuff is actually the least interesting bit. What makes the film worth watching is the behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to play football at these places. Not only do they have to train to play football but they are also full-time students, training for deployment and of course knowing that their five years after graduation will possibly put them into a war zone. I really found the entire movie to be entertaining and even though it runs nearly two-hours I didn't want to see it come to an end. When you think of the college life it's certainly not what you see here and it's rather incredible what these young men and women must go through. During one of the halftime locker rooms, an Army players refers to San Diego State saying that in the summer their players are sitting around playing war video games while the Army men are actually doing the stuff. The documentary does a terrific job at showing how football is probably the least important thing to these students but it all comes down to that one game at the end of the year. For those three hour the two sides are enemies but after that they are going to be fighting and dying for each other. This is certainly a very good film that will hopefully draw an audience.