Admirable film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A fairly accurate representation of both High School; the peer pressures of sex, drugs and rock and roll so to speak and living in a depressed dried up steel town trying to make more of yourself, getting a degree and literally making all the right moves, although Cruise and Nelson are the marque stars the performances of Chris Penn and Lea Thompson are superb, 3 out of 4 stars

Ampipe (Johnstown, PA), a depressed and gritty steel town located just outside of Pittsburgh is in obvious decline. It had been founded long before by Ampipe Pipe and Steel when steel was big. In the old days young men left high school, acquired a job at the mill, married, fathered children, and bought a house while they were still young. Most of the local men still work at Ampipe, but layoffs are increasing. Enter Stef Djordjevic (Tom Cruise), a cornerback for his Ampipe High School football team (The Bulldogs), who wants a college scholarship to an engineering college, his ticket out of town. He displays his Penn State pennant on his bedroom wall. Stef resides with his father (Charles Cioffi) and older brother, Rick (Gary Graham), both of whom work in the mill. Stef doesn't always act in a nice way but is generally likable. His problem is his attitude, which drives his Coach, Nickerson (Craig T. Nelson), mad as a hatter. Stef does not always listen to his coach's teachings. Stef maintains a B average at Ampipe High, not good enough for a college scholarship. So he needs football as his meal ticket. Stef happens to be a very good defensive player, although he is not the star of his team. Meanwhile Coach Nickerson too is looking for a way out of Ampipe, as he has a chance to become defensive backfield coach at Cal Poly. The coach is tough and no-nonsense, and really works his players hard during the practices. He is less than perfect, and when players make mistakes, he considers them as quitters on the team. Even though the movie revolves around high school football, it is more about inter-personal relationships than about the gridiron. In fact, the big game against the Knights of Walnut Heights, a richer school undefeated and ranked number three in Pennsylvania, occurs only half-way through the movie, not at the denouement. And yet an interesting well-filmed piece does involve the road game: the long bus journey to Walnut Heights with the players thinking their individual thoughts, the tensions in the locker room, the pre-game prep talk, the long spiral football spinning through the air, the hard hits and grunts in the rain, and the eventual heartbreaking loss. Nevertheless, the important matter is the story of life, as when the two teen-aged protagonists (Stef and Lisa, Lea Thompson) finally get around to expressing their true feelings. Secondary characters have their stories to tell. There are the men, laid off from work, who drown their sorrows in the local gin mill. One young man in financial difficulty becomes desperate enough to commit a robbery. A life-changing event involves a cheerleader who becomes pregnant. Then there are the antics of a bar room bully. Stef himself becomes tense as his expected football scholarships fail to materialize. In summary the plot is decent, and even though the movie is not a great one, is still worth watching.

Curiosity may kill the cat but it does not kill nostalgia. To discover today this thirty year old film with a Tom Cruise who must have been hardly out of his teens at the time is funny but interesting to know what an important actor today was at the beginning of his career. You may recognize some of his facial and attitudinal ticks but he sure was young.The film itself is nothing to brag about. A High School football film again. Stef is a promising football player who could easily get a football scholarship in any college or nearly, if he could finish his senior year on the football team and even take the team to a victory.He does not because he makes a mistake he had been warned about several times on the last game he plays (the last but one of the season). In fact his team loses the game because he attacks a player who had the ball after he had passed the ball away. He was attacking the man instead of following the ball. Penalty and the game is lost. The coach is furious of course after the game but Stef is aggressive and in fact attacks the coach and makes him responsible. From this point to the catastrophe there was only one step and Stef crossed it. He is dropped from the team. Then he has to walk home, quite a good distance. So he thumbs a lift and is picked by a band of loafers from his city who decide to go spoil and soil the home of the coach and his cars. They manage to get Stef along and he is considered as responsible for it.He is dropped from all prospective colleges. Since he is from a steel industry city in Pennsylvania, he has no future except working at the mill. The film is supposed to teach us a lesson, just the way it does to Stef: apologize and forgive, but that's hard when you were wrong in the first place, though it is also hard when you get even with someone who is wrong by being wrong yourself, i.e. not forgiving and/or not apologizing. At the same time apologizing and forgiving may become a sort of encouragement to other people to go on being obnoxious. Life at times cannot go without some strife and tension and people have to learn to step over it and just put it behind. But fear comes back into the picture. When you are afraid of life you tend to look back behind yourself and then you cannot put the past behind. If you try too hard it might backfire, at least in your dreams.The myth in the film is that such strife and tension is typically masculine and it takes women to soften the situation: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and the medicine goes down. Really? I am sure I will trip my foot in the carpet if I tried that magic potion.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

The most noteworthy thing about this movie, and probably the only reason why it's still around, is that it has Tom Cruise in one of his earliest starring roles. Aside from that, there isn't really much to it. It's not bad I guess, but it's just all so plain and mediocre except for some of the acting. This script is one of the most predictable things ever written and just hums by with no surprises of any sort. You can't bring a lot of variation within the formula of a small town drama, but for the love of God, try a little. Often it just really needs to get to the point, because things get pretty boring if you already know the ending an hour beforehand. The raw, realistic filming style of the movie is in fact pretty good and really expresses desperation, but it just doesn't make the story any more interesting. As far as very young Tom Cruise goes, it's "Risky Business" all the way.