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| | A hard knock in a game of professional football puts Cap Rooney out of the game. He is replaced by an unknown whose subsequent performances transform the team making the ageing coach reevaluate his own life and plans...
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No matter who you are, no matter what
you do for a living, there’s always somebody younger, faster and stronger
coming right up behind you. At the crossroads of his life, Tony D’Amato
(Al Pacino) has finally come to that realisation.
Four years ago, D’Amato’s Miami Sharks had nailed two AFFA
(Associated Football Franchises of America) championships in a row, but in pro
years, that’s a lifetime. Now, his team is struggling with three
consecutive losses, sliding attendance, and aging heroes, particularly
39-year-old quarterback Jack "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid), who’s
desperately clinging to what’s left for him as a player.
Off the field, D’Amato is struggling with a failed marriage and estranged
children, and is on a collision course with Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz),
the young president/co-owner of the Sharks organisation.
Unlike her late father, an old school protector of the sport’s sanctity,
Christina maintains a take-no-prisoners style of management. She knows that the
harsh realities of the modern game means that profitable portions must be
parceled out to the highest bidders from the world of media, marketing and
merchandising...and a losing team means a losing investment. Although she may
start off as a novice, she evolves more and more as the crisis escalates, and
eventually becomes a force of nature of the modern world of professional
sports.
Cap Rooney is a quarterback who symbolises the great recent past of the Sharks;
he's football royalty. But he's getting older and fighting to hold onto his own
legend. When a devastating hit knocks Rooney and the second-string quarterback
out of the game, the Sharks’ third-string, seventh-round draft pick,
Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx), is called onto the field. After a shaky start, and
against all expectations, Beamen begins to stun both fans and management with
his spectacular gridiron performance, throwing the great Cap Rooney’s
future into doubt and forcing D’Amato to grapple with his long-cherished
ideals of personal and professional loyalty.
Whereas D’Amato firmly believes that the game "has got to be about
something more than winning," the only goal that the pragmatic
"Steamin’ Beamen" has is winning— with all of the material
perks that he can acquire during the short life span of a pro football
player.
With Beamen pushing from one side, Christina Pagniacci pressuring from the
other, and his old quarterback Cap trying hard to get back onto the field, Tony
D’Amato sees the Sharks coming apart at the seams. Pressured and
disillusioned, he wonders if he’s losing his edge, his team and his very
reason to wake up in the morning.
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Warner Bros
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