Hoosiers Blu-ray offers decent video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
High school basketball is king in small-town Indiana, and the 1954 Hickory Huskers are all hope and no talent. But their new coach, abrasive and unlikable Norman Dale, whips the team into shape... while also inciting controversy.
Stop me if you've heard this one: a rag-tag team of scrappy misfits—playing David to the
opposition's Goliath—bands together, beats the incalculable odds, and emerges victoriously as
hometown heroes, miraculously transforming themselves—through blood, sweat, and tears—from
down-and-out underdogs to the lauded leaders of the pack. Sound familiar? The standard-issue
inspirational sports film is perhaps the most formulaic of narrative formulas, prone to cliché, chest-
heaving sentimentalism, and the overuse of training montages set to fist-pumping tunes. (Having
recently reviewed Rocky: The Undisputed Collection, I feel qualified in making this claim.)
But despite the predictability, audiences love feel-good stories where small fries take down the
super-sized. While Hoosiers didn't invent the formula, it is one of the standouts of a
cluttered genre, thanks to a few excellent performances and the universality of the film's message
of perseverance, acceptance, and redemption. I'm admittedly not much of a sports fan, but even I
get caught up in the film's rah rah sis boom bah sense of teamwork and fighting spirit.
"First of all, let's be real friendly here, okay? My name is Norm. Secondly, your coaching days are
over."
Those who grew up in a small town will readily attest to the almost obsessive importance of high
school sports, particularly football and basketball. I can only imagine that this community-wide
common interest was amplified in the 1950s, back before cable television, the internet, and
fantasy football leagues. In Hoosiers, the sleepy post-war burg of Hickory, Indiana comes
alive during basketball season. Local players are treated like gods in some athletic pantheon, and
the sad old-timers reminisce about the glory days of yore while living vicariously through the on-
court triumphs of the town's fresh-faced youngsters. Imagine the suspicion of the townies, then,
when Norman Dale (Gene Hackman)—a former university coach with nowhere left to turn after a
shady incident some 10 years before—is brought in to lead Hickory High's basketball squad.
Norman gets quite a grilling from the barbershop regulars—for whom zone defense is tantamount
to sacrilege—and the new coach's unorthodox training regiment gets the townsfolk worked up in
a conspiratorial tizzy. Norman knows what he's doing, though, even giving the town drunk
(Dennis Hopper) a second, redemptive chance as an assistant coach. The locals are gradually won
over, especially after reticent hotshot Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis) agrees to rejoin the team,
spurring a winning streak that takes the underdog Hickory Huskers all the way to the state
championship.
Director David Anspaugh and writer Angelo Pizzo are no strangers to the sports genre—they
would later re-team for Rudy—and in Hoosiers they spin an inspirational yarn
that has only frayed slightly in the years since its 1986 release. It's easy, of course, to be jaded
after two decades of similarly formulaic sports movies like Coach Carter, Remember
the Titans, and Friday Nights Lights, but Hoosiers has the game-winning
advantage of being a.) a period piece, which gives it some nostalgic leeway, and b.) a two-seater
vehicle for the almost-always fantastic Gene Hackman and the deliriously unpredictable Dennis
Hopper, who got an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. In fact, the film is only nominally
about the Hickory Huskers winning the state championship. Little time is spent developing the
high school characters—though they're certainly not flat—while most of the film is devoted to
Norman Dale's journey from outsider to acceptance, and the redemptive arc given to Hopper's
has-been drunkard. While Hopper has the more emotionally wrenching role—it also seems more
self-reflective, considering his own battles with sobriety—Gene Hackman truly carries the film
with a quiet confidence that's undermined by both rejection from the townies and his own nasty,
violence-prone temper. Like all great actors, his mental machinations are visible in his eyes even
when he's silent; he simply exudes screen-filling charisma.
The movie gets a lot right—the molasses-slow existence of small town life, the 1950s innocence,
the fever-pitched excitement of a winning streak—but the May-to-December romance between
Norman and fellow teacher Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey) seems unnecessarily jammed into a
plot already crammed with emotional material. It feels like her plotline was either inserted at the
last moment or significantly trimmed from what had been a more substantial role. On a technical
level, the production is almost perilously dated by now-laughable film conventions of the 1980s.
One of the challenges of a sports movie is to compress the action into narrative beats that are
well-timed, showing just enough to tell the "story" of the game, but Hoosiers is almost
as montage-heavy as Rocky IV, where the mid-section is basically one long training
sequence. In and of itself this would be manageable, but the action is set to a bizarrely
anachronistic score by the usually reliable Jerry Goldsmith. Big digital drum beats pound time
against a background of chunky synthesizer pads, giving Hoosiers' mostly authentic
1950s vibe a distinct and un-called for 1980s odor. Goldsmith inexplicably received an Oscar nod
for his contributions, which just goes to prove that the '80s truly was unaware of its own excess.
Still, Hoosiers is a fan-favorite that continues to inspire audiences and serve as a
template for sports film producers looking to photocopy a plot.
Hoosiers premiered on Blu-ray in March of 2007, sporting a 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer that
really didn't do the film any favors. Looking at Hoosiers today, the video deficiencies are all
the more evident when you consider some of the remarkable restorations given to catalog titles in
the past two years. I'm no fan of DNR—if a movie was shot on film, I expect it to look that way—but
Hoosiers is speckled with a persistently heavy grain field that commingles with source noise
to create a buzzing, fluctuating membrane that covers the image almost constantly, but is
especially apparent in shots of the sky and characters' faces. Granted, I prefer this to waxy
smearing, but a good bit of detail is lost in some of the heavier patches of grain. The image is at its
best during game time—in the well-lit gymnasiums—with nicely carved contrast, a satisfying sense
of clarity, and the Huskers' red and yellow uniforms popping cleanly off the screen. Outside the gym,
however, the picture often falters. Black levels can crush the detail in Hackman's pea coat or else
look hazy and insubstantial, contrast is sometimes bland, and sharpness varies from scene to scene.
The film is occasionally very crisp—see the wrinkles on Hackman's face or the weft in his tweed suit
jacket—but this simply doesn't hold up throughout. The image certainly isn't bad, but you
get a feeling watching Hoosiers that it could certainly look a lot better.
While Hoosiers ships with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, the sound
is nearly as disappointing as the visuals. This is an almost entirely front-heavy track, and there
were instances when I craned toward my rear speakers, wondering if perhaps they had come
unplugged. There's almost nothing here to suggest a dimensional soundfield. While you'll
occasionally hear cheering in the surround channels and a modicum of environmental ambience
—like the reverb during Norman's introduction of the team at the school assembly—this track
misses a lot of opportunities for true 5.1 engagement. When Norman first enters the school and
students flood down the stairs and out of classrooms past him, where are their footsteps or the
sound of casual hallway chatter? There's a decent spread across the front channels, but there are
long stretches of the film where it might as well be monophonic.
As I mentioned in the review, I'm not a big fan of Jerry Goldsmith's score here—seriously, why
the big drum machine beats?—and the music, along with being monumentally incongruous,
sounds unremarkable, with hardly any real bass response. Dialogue is mostly clean and clear, but
every once in awhile it seems boxy and thin, particularly when Norman shouts from the sidelines.
And what's up with the cheering from the stands? Instead of thunderous uproar, it sounds like a
crowd as filtered and flattened through the speakers of a portable AM radio. I understand that
this 5.1 track has been repurposed from somewhat dated source material, but I've heard other
films from the same era that sound much bigger, immersive, and dynamically solid.
On the menu of this disc you'll notice a tab that reads "Special Features." As in, features with an 's,'
plural, like, more than one. Click it open and you'll find the Hoosiers Theatrical Trailer (1080p,
2:38) all by its lonesome. Seriously, how hard would it have been to port over the substantial
features that were included on the special edition DVD? Perhaps MGM is planning a double-dip for
the film's 25th anniversary in 2011. If MGM is still around, that is. Elsewhere on the disc you'll find
high definition trailers for Rocky, Hart's War, and Flyboys.
I'd be willing to be that, if you asked 100 people what their favorite sports film is, there would be an
almost equal split between Hoosiers and Rudy, which, considering the abundance
of sports films out there, is quite a cinematic coup for writer Angelo Pizzo and director David
Anspaugh. Despite a weirdly incongruous soundtrack and some dated editing techniques,
Hoosiers holds up fairly well today. Unfortunately, this Blu-ray edition of the film leaves a
lot to be desired, as it features middling video quality, an adequate but unimpressive audio track,
and a stripped down package of supplementary features that includes only a theatrical trailer. If
you're a fan of the film, you really can't go wrong with Amazon's current price, but just be aware of
what you're getting.
