Do any of you follow American football? If you don't, this show is definitely going to be as interesting as watching paint dry. Al Pacino stars in this "contact sport" movie.

The story is centered on a football (American football that is) team, Miami Sharks which has Tony D'mato (Al Pacino) as its coach. The team is struggling with three consecutive losses in the football league, sliding attendance and aging heroes, particularly 39-year-old quarterback (something equivalent to the star-striker in soccer) Jack "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid).

When Rooney gets a devastating tackle in one of the ball games, "2nd team" Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx) is called to replace Rooney. From an unknown third-string quarterback, Beamen begins to stun both fans and management with his unexpectedly spectacular performance , hogging the limelight which the great "Cap Rooney" use to have.

Willie eventually becomes very famous, till he even got a No.1 single! However, he becomes too proud, too arrogant and does not care much of the feelings of the other players, even the coach. The team then does not want to co-operate with him anymore, leaving him to get injured by his fellow opponents.

D'mato believes that the game is more about winning, the only goal that the pragmatic "Steamin' Beamen" has is acquiring material perks. With Beamen pushing from one side, Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) who is the young co-owner of the Sharks organisation, wants to end it all by selling the whole team. She is also another stubborn-headed person who does not listen to other people suggestions.

As coach, he did not want to see the Sharks die. He started boosting the morale of the team by getting Rooney back in play as an influential figure. Halfway through the most important game of all, the Sharks loses its captain (Rooney). Willie, after being advised a lot by Tony, takes over and wins the game, this time with the team's support (as expected).

However, after the win, when many people thought that Tony is going to retire, he doesn't. Instead, he becomes head coach of Aztecs with Willie becoming his most important player.

This movie showcases many inspirational speeches (which seems to work all the time in the movies but not in reality). Half the dialogue is actually Al Pacino screaming his head off either arguing with everyone in the show or giving inspirational speeches. Plenty of hard-tackles, butt-kicking American football captions included. Eye popping action too (Really! There was one scene where a player's eye ball actually popped out).

Pros: This show has a lot inspirational speeches and football 'eye popping' action. Besides that, it talks about trust among others, courage, and most important of all, friendship.

Cons: Two and a half hours of a dull storyline is pretty much torture. Pretty predictable too. Not a film for Malaysians as most of us do not follow American football.