Blue Chips
Before there was “Moneyball,” before there was “Draft Day,” there was “Blue Chips.” Rather than look at the pro game, the film, written by “Bull Durham” and “Tin Cup” author Ron Shelton, takes the formula back to school, and the pressure to win at the college level. The film came out just a month after Steve James’s landmark documentary, “Hoop Dreams,” screened triumphantly at Sundance in 1994, and watching it a few months after I watched that film again, it feels genuinely authentic to the reality of how things are.
Pete Bell (Nick Nolte) is the head coach at the fictional Western University in Los Angeles, and they’ve got a tradition of winning that is in danger of ending. When we first see him, Bell is about to have his first losing season at Western. The talent just isn’t there, and they haven’t been able to recruit for years. The reason? Other schools are delivering under-the-table. An alumni named Happy (JT Walsh) knows this well, and knows what it took to get the Western football team to be in the Top 10 the past 8 years. Bell isn’t interested in that, though; despite rumors of a point shaving incident a few years ago, Bell runs a clean program. As Pete says to his athletic director, there are two concerns he has: 1) if he gets caught, he will never coach again, and 2) if he doesn’t get caught. He hates losing, though. Maybe it’s worth the risk.
I’ve mentioned plenty of times over the years about how I have a weakness for sports movies, in particular underdog sports films. “Blue Chips” doesn’t quite fit that formula, but it’s a compelling and entertaining look at a moral dilemma for modern day sports. This is an ethical drama masquerading as a sports movie, and it’s the sort of movie Shelton did quite well at that time. There are great performances all around, starting with Nolte, who is electric as Bell, and continuing through with Mary McDonnell as Pete’s ex-wife, who still loves him, but loves the team more; Walsh, who is slimy and riveting as the “friend of the program” who makes Pete’s dreams come true; Ed O’Neill as a local reporter who smells something fishy at Western, and Bell’s program; Bob Cousy, a former Celtic, as the athletic director; and Shaquille O’Neal, in his first film role, as the raw talent Neon, who doesn’t want anything, and sees a lot of things as “culturally biased.” The action on the court is exciting, but it’s what’s going on in Bell’s life, and the game he loves, that holds our attention.
“Blue Chips” is directed by William Friedkin, the Oscar winning director of “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist” and “To Live and Die in LA.” I’m not exactly sure what drew the director to Shelton’s script, but I would imagine it was the moral drama that Bell finds himself embroiled in. Throughout the film, the purest thing in his life in tainted, sometimes by outside influences like Happy or the cruel realities of what it takes to build a championship program, sometimes by personal decisions he makes himself. At the end, he has the chance for something truly great, but his soul is crushed by the weight of what he’s done. The choice he makes is humbling, and honest, and he’s at peace in a way we haven’t seen throughout the film, despite having an uncertain future. That’s all Nolte, who is the beating heart, and tormented soul, of this film. He’s a winner, and so’s the movie.
