A Season on the Brink

Being an avid ESPN watcher, I can't even guess how many previews the network had for "A Season on the Brink"...To be honest I think the producers should have spent more time on the actual program then on all the hype. OK, this movie really seemed to have no middle ground: In the majority of scenes with his current players Bob Knight is just a bully. His language is just atrocious, and plainly it offended me to hear the F-bomb 50+ times in this movie, the show made its point that BK has a "potty-mouth," but enough was enough. Secondly, the other half of the movie tried to pain BK like a total angel. The scenes with his lovable son seemed contrived and way to lovey-dovey. When the older player(guy in wheel-chair) comes back to watch a practice he thanks Bob for saving his life, buying him a home, giving him a foundation....blah blah blah The movie just ended 10 mins ago, so maybe I'm jumping to a quick conclusion...but I think ESPN should stick to what it knows with sports broadcasting and forget its new original films projects

A Season on the Brink, the first movie made by ESPN ain't gonna win any awards, but its an entertaining looks at the most wildly charismatic and controversial coach in NCAA basketball history, Bobby Knight.

You can tell when you watch the movie that it didn't quite have the budget of your normal movie - the basketball scenes are kinda cheesy lookin and when they try to weave it in with actual game footage it looks a little ridiculous.

But the movie is worth watching just for Brian Dennehy, who looks and talks exactly like Bobby Knight. The movie surely takes some dramatic license, it has to, and the cast arouns Dennehy is nothing to write home about - but Dennehy sparkles and the movie is certainly worth watching for any college basketball or any sports fan.

This film was a highly anticipated one for me, partly due to all of the hype created by ESPN and because it was based on the real life character Bobby Knight. The movie had it's own style to it, with clips of actual Hoosier footage inserted into the acting, which in a way resembled the style of Forrest Gump. This film, in my opinion, is a "watch-one-time" movie because most of the good parts were given away by the commercials and it basically displayed what most of us sports buffs knew about Bob Knight anyways.

Plus: Profane language added realism and brought a new perspective to the reality of the Knight regime

Minus: It was a fairly uninteresting film, unless you are a devout

Hoosier fan



In sum, good work ESPN, don't quit your day job, but try to make a couple more good films.

ESPN attempts to give us a look at the inside wheeling and dealings of the charismatic coach Bobby Knight(Brian Dennehy)whipping an Indiana Hoosier team into shape to compete in the 1985-86 basketball season. Knight is the vocal point of the project and there are some good scenes where real game footage is used. Interest is moderate and it is odd watching a candy coated, but nonetheless brash vision of the ballsy coach. Dennehy seems at ease with the role and some good performances are turned in by Al Thompson, James Lafferty, Michael James Johnson and Yorick Park as Indiana team members. Not as impressive as a three pointer, but worth a trip to the free throw line.

I can't believe ESPN took so much time to promote this film, for it to turn out the way it did. Every time I turned on ESPN, there was a commercial or an on-screen ad for this movie, and it never lived up to its hype. It seemed like nothing more than an excuse to say the f-word on TV. Watching the edited version on ESPN-2 was even more ridiculous, if not hilarious, with some of Knight/Dennehy's "multiple-expletive" phrases being nothing but quick bleeps. (What was supposed to be the f-word three times in succession, was done as bleep-bleep-bleep). If I were Brian Dennehy, I would not include this on his resume.