When the Game Stands Tall

Name: When the Game Stands Tall
Director: Thomas Carter
Released: 2014

Synopsis

A young coach turns a losing high school football program around to go undefeated for 12 consecutive seasons.

75
New York Post
Nearly as good as the average episode of TV’s “Friday Nights Lights,” which makes it better than most movies and one of the better sports films of recent years.
60
Arizona Republic
There's no question that a soft-spoken person can be a great leader, but Caviezel underplays Ladouceur to the point that you wonder how the players could even hear him, much less be inspired by him.
58
The A.V. Club
For all the pains the movie takes to explain why someone shouldn’t play football—to win, to be a star, to defeat others — it never bothers to explain why someone should play the game. It’s a collection of well-intentioned absences with no defining presence to speak of.
50
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
When the Game Stands Tall is a solid if unsurprising and uninspiring melodrama.
40
Austin Chronicle
It’s an impossible standard, maybe, but in 42 minutes, TV’s "Friday Night Lights" delivered all-star-level emotional complexity and action. When the Game Stands Tall is strictly JV squad.
40
The Hollywood Reporter
It’s too blandly acted and directed to make much of an impact.
40
Variety
An inspirational sports drama that goes long on rectitudinous sermonizing but comes up short on gridiron thrills or genuine love for the game.
38
Slant Magazine
Jim Caviezel commits only to the level of God-like omniscience that Mel Gibson whipped into him a decade ago, and as such his character often seems less a teacher than an appropriately shadowy figurehead of authority.