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Reviews Counted: 17
Fresh: 5
Rotten:12
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Synopsis: Rick Penning (Sean Faris, Never Back Down) lives life just like he plays rugby; fast, hard-hitting and intense for a team coached by his overbearing father (Neal McDonough, Minority Report). When... [More]
Starring: Gary Cole, Sean Faris, Arielle Kebbel, Julie Warner
Director: Ryan Little
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Created under the vague guise of "inspirational cinema," Strong is a sloppy, soggy pile of clichés, unable to sort itself out, grow a pair of cinematic cojones, and actually try to subvert some of its rancid formula.
The father-son relationship that bolts this rugby film together provides the textured backdrop for a sports film that engages
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Top CriticNo review available.
Top CriticThis earnest indie production comes across like formulaic fiction while taking cues (and recycling cliches) from the 'inspirational sports drama' playbook.
Top CriticThe very Tom Cruise-like Sean Faris makes this respectable portrayal noteworthy considering the gritty sport's irrelevancy to most Americans.
[Director Ryan] Little and cinematographer T.C. Christensen make you feel the heat in every scrum.
There's something disheartening about seeing real-life stories and their inevitable complexities put through the Hollywood sausage machine and transformed into bland parables.
It's definitely possible to make artful message movies -- just consider the filmography of ex-Mormon iconoclast Richard Dutcher -- but Forever Strong is generic faith-and-redemption fare, devoid of nuance.
As directed by Ryan Little and written by David Pliler, Forever Strong dredges up every sports movie cliché and stereotype ever invented. (Cue the slow-mo in the rain.)
Top CriticThe movie is well shot and edited, the rugby scenes are enjoyable (if likely puzzling to the uninitiated) and Strong's earnestness excuses at least some of its predictability.
Top CriticGives the word "forgettable" a bad name.
While it does boast some of the expected tropes and formulas of cinematic sports dramas, it's a competent, entertaining and involving movie that features a decent message about self-discipline and redemption.
The whole package here is warmed-over mush from a hundred other sports movies, a tale padded out with game footage, training sequences, absurd coincidences, life lessons that teach nothing and wasted casting.
Shares the secret sin of many a pigskin pic: Despite all the macho posturing, the corny story is just as sappy as anything on Lifetime.
Top CriticAmerican rugby is the setting for this earnest sausage party of macho posturing, bro-dacious life lessons and value-focused sportsmanship that give wayward teens the strength to rise above sinful temptations.
Though director Ryan Little puts together a clean, professional package, at bottom this is a nearly-two-hour scrum of therapeutic direct encounters.
Top CriticContrived corniness abounds.
August 24, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review 
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