Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

unkadunk0801 This is a great movie not only about sports ,but how two men grew to love and respect each other !And I first saw it on Nov.30,1971 and enjoyed it so much .The cast that was headed by James Caan as Brian Piccolo and Billy Dee Williams as Gale Sayers with Jack Warden in his Emmy Winning Best Supporting Actor as the Coach George Hallas and Judy Pace and Shelley Fabares as their wives plus actual members of the Chicago Bears as themselves all did a great job in this truly excellent movie! And if anyone didn't sob when Gale at the sports award ceremony accepts the award and dedicates it to Brian and asks everyone to pray for him or when he tell the team about Brians illness is only fooling themselves because admit it we all cried .And I still cry when I watch it even now And I have it on DVD and when ever i go away its one of several movies i take with me to watch on my portable DVD player.And its funny when people see me watching the movie they remember it as well So indeed it has endured and will be remembered forever as a truly great movie !

SnoopyStyle Quiet Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) joins the Chicago Bears and is befriended by the brash Brian Piccolo (James Caan). It starts off with Piccolo playing a joke on Sayers telling him that coach Halas (Jack Warden) is deaf in one ear. Sayers returns the favor. They compete for the same job. Sayers is the sure thing. Piccolo is too slow and too light. The team decides to room the two together in 1965 based on position rather than race. The two and their wives become great friends enduring many challenges.In the ashes of the racial strife of the previous decade, this TV movie hits on the timely subject by showing the healing powers of a post-racial true friendship. The modernity of their relationship allowed the viewers to get pass all their hang ups. That's why the nigg*r scene works so well. James Caan is brilliant and he follows it up with the iconic 'The Godfather'. Billy Dee's Sayers starts off quiet but then turns up the heat. The only thing truly missing is some better football scenes. The use of real game footage to augment the inferior footage with the actors helps a little. I wish it could be done more seamlessly but that may be asking too much. This is definitely a melodrama and viewers have to be prepared for it.

cstotlar-1 I actually met Gale and Ardie Sayers when Gale was director of athletics at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. In fact they were guests in our home one afternoon. So I had saved this film for a special occasion. Television cooperated and I caught it last night. The acting is quite fine. The script doesn't act for any real soul-searching, nor was it meant to. It was courageous at a time when the country was being torn apart by racial unrest and an inspiration of true friendship that knows no racial bounds. Frankly, the music was terrible! Back in those days, I suppose that anything like a musical score was considered not particularly important to a film's success but the score was badly performed. Obviously there wasn't much rehearsal time (if any) and the instruments simply didn't come in at the same time and their intonation sounded as if the players hadn't even tuned up. TV movies of today certainly wouldn't fall into a trap like that. Sometimes it sounded so artificial that I was almost expecting test patterns to flick on the screen. At least it wasn't maudlin...Curtis Stotlar

steven_winkler6 I had no idea until recently that this was a TV movie. It has all the markings of an Oscar Winning feature film. The fact that neither Caan nor Williams won an Emmy is quite fascinating. Hard to believe that this is the same guy (caan) who was portraying Sonny Corleone in the Godfather at the same time. If you get the DVD, put on the commentary over the movie.It's James Caan and Billy De Williams narrating and it's great. The NFL films inserts are great as well. I do wish it could have been longer, but I'd rather have a great short film than a full length feature film that's boring.