Just as March Madness looms on the horizon for sports fans and gamblers, The News-Gazette Film Series presents one of the best films about basketball — the 1986 “Hoosiers” starring Gene Hackman.
It screens at the Virginia Theatre at 2 p.m. (note there is no evening show for this film) on Feb. 28.
Of course, “Hoosiers” deals with high school basketball, not the March Madness college-level of the game.
But no less an authority than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in a 2020 Hollywood Reporter article listing his recommendations of memorable sports films (which he thought elevated the sport and the audience) about five different sports, picked “Hoosiers” to represent basketball.
The film deals with themes of redemption and second chances in the context of small-town high school basketball.
Coach Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) coached college ball for 10 years but was blackballed when he struck one of his own players, and the next 12 years he spent in the Navy.
Now (in 1951), an old friend, the principal (Sheb Wooley) of the Hickory, Ind., high school, hired him to replace the former coach who recently died.
Their star player refuses to play after the death of the former coach (a father figure to him).
There are only 68 boys in the school, so Dale has just barely enough players to put five on the floor (and sometimes not even that).
And the school board and the townspeople are so invested in high school basketball that they not only expect Dale to perform miracles with the team but also try to dictate to him how to do his job and quickly turn against him when he insists on doing things his way.
Then there’s English teacher Myra Feeney (Barbara Hershey), who takes an instant dislike to Dale and also tries to keep former star player Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainas) off the court and studying for college.
The film follows Dale and his team throughout the season until they run up against a team from a much larger school, the defending state champions.
The film was inspired by the 1954 Indiana State Championship victory of Milan High School against a team from a school 10 times larger.
Hackman is at his best here as the coach still dealing with his anger issues while trying to turn his handful of players into a cooperative and capable team.
The boys in the team were actually for the most part basketball players rather than actors and so come off as entirely natural in their roles.
Dennis Hopper portrays “Shooter” Flatch, town drunk, basketball maven and father of one of Dale’s players, whom Dale takes on as an assistant coach, at least in part to help him get sober; and earned a best-supporting-actor Oscar nomination for his nuanced performance here.
Composer Jerry Goldsmith also received an Oscar nomination for his score here.
And particularly, the games are well photographed and edited to put the viewer right in the center of the action.
Hackman reportedly thought the film was going to be a flop and a threat to the actors’ careers, but it did well at the box office and has become something of a cult favorite.
“Hoosiers” ranked 13th on the American Film Institute’s list of America’s 100 Most Inspiring Movies and fourth on their list of the Top Ten Sports Films.
“Hoosiers” marked the feature film debut for director David Anspaugh and writer/producer Angelo Pizzo.
In 1993, they performed the same roles on “Rudy,” a popular film involving football.
And they collaborated a third time on “The Game of Their Lives” (2005) about the American upset of the British soccer team in the 1950 FIFA World Cup.
Individually, they’ve worked in different genres, but sports films clearly anchor their careers.
There may be a lot of familiar beats and tropes in “Hoosiers,” but it definitely deserves its ranks in the AFI lists.
It’s generally considered by critics to be one of the best sports movies ever.
And it has been selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” (apparently at least in part due to an especially large number of nominations from Hoosiers).
If You Go What: The News-Gazette Film Series presents ‘Hoosiers’ (1986). When: 2 p.m. Feb. 28. Where: Virginia Theatre, 203 W. Park Ave., C. Tickets: $7. Box office: thevirginia.org or 217-356-9063.