Touchback (2011)

Such a frustrating disappointment

People are voting emotionally.

Memorable, crazy movie

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Is your life really so bad? If you could change one decision you made 20 years ago that will affect the direction of the rest of your life but probably away from the people you now cherish, what would you do? This film has some similarities to four films I enjoyed: the James Stewart Christmas classic from 1946 "It's a Wonderful Life;" two films with Nicholas Gage: "When Peggy Sue Got Married" with Kathleen Turner, and "The Family Man" with Tea Leoni; and "13 going on 30" with Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo. I'm sure there are other movies with similar themes about introspection to pivotal moments in one's life and the effects they have ultimately. But if you also enjoyed any 2 of those 4 films then you will enjoy this heart-warming flick about a high school football hero whose life seemed to change on a bad twist of fate. And despite his efforts to make the best of it, fate deals him another bad break before he reaches a point of one last pivotal decision. The story is the critical element here - not the acting, or subplots, or cinematography, or directing, etc. Just enjoy the story.

Scanned the cluttered movie store shelves for an hour before I found "Touchback". Both the cover and title were less than captivating but the IMDb reviews were good, so home it came.What a surprise! Time travel, decent football scenes, and enough romance to keep the wife well interested. The suspense and unpredictability of the ending iced the cake! If you are looking for a good movie for mixed company, to entertain a group of youth, or for a date night -- this is one to keep in mind.Despite being a box office flop, this movie has all elements of a great movie for its budget.

I give it a ten sleeper. It did not appeal to me but I had some time so I watched it. What a life lesson!!! Its a good reminder that if we want change make it happen stop living in the past. Kurt Russell has always been a favorite actor and his attitude is contagious. I loved it, its a little slow at times but adds to the suspense even tho you know what is probably going to happen...Modern Its a wonderful life.Ten lines huh??? Well that was all I had to say I was trying to be concise I would hope that would suffice. However, I didn't realize ten lines was so hard to write when I had run out of things to write they shouldn't make you write ten lines. But, there you go this is ten lines for your comment page.

It's easy to see why this indie masterpiece should have garnered only about a 6.0 rating (from 1,425 IMDb viewers, as I write). For one thing, it's a thoroughly derivative film, in fact a virtual remake of a beloved Hollywood classic (which I shall not name here because to do so would itself be a spoiler), but with all the characters, plot details, and the specific setting, changed. As we all know, most remakes are shameless ripoffs of the original inspired film, and even the best of them must walk a tightrope between being too much the same (in which case why remake it) and too different (thus alienating the aficionados of the classic). And of course remakes are easy meat for jaded critics of the lesser sort, who crave novelty for its own sake, and who for whom first-rate film-making and high craftsmanship, are inadequate compensations for boring them with familiar material. Although I am a music lover, I tend to feel that way about opera, and for that reason would never presume to write about it since I obviously don't "get it".Many of these would-be sophisticates have felt obliged to diss this film for being too schmaltzy or cornball, forgetting that the beloved classic was similarly laced with schmaltz and cornball clichés, yet somehow rose above its own deliberately embraced limitations, through sheer excellence in movie making. Well this one does too, and I prefer it for it's relative realism, and restraint. Compared to the original, which feels like an adapted stage play (which it may well be), this is a true movie, whose greatest strengths include a pervasive and haunting musical background to prolonged, wordless, cinematographic pans of small town life, the land, and the people who work it.This movie presents as yet another inspirational sports movie, and while its central character is a high school football hero, and sequences from "the big game" frame the movie, as in all the better inspirational sports movies the game is merely a metaphor for life. This is a flashback movie, and much of its emotional impact turns on poignant juxtapositions of then and now - an over-familiar cinematic conceit, perhaps, but one which is here made to seem both natural and inevitable.Some have complained either that the ending is predictable (we know what choices the protagonist is going to make), or on the other hand, that the film's ending leaves too much up in the air. I would say that these contradictory gripes indicates that just the right balance has been struck on that account. And even if there are no great plot surprises (except, perhaps, for the sheer fittingness of the ending), the drama and suspense of the protagonist's voyage of self-discovery are sustained in a low key throughout the film.Some may be disappointed that the hero is inarticulate - the strong, silent, type - but that is his character, and it too is sustained consistently and realistically by the script, which cleverly offloads most of the film's verbal messages to his coach, whose profession it is to instruct and to move, through words. The only flaws that I can see are a number of small lapses in realism, that football fans will pick up on, and in particular the distracted behavior of the quarterback on the field, continually searching the stands for guidance or inspiration from the woman in his life, even in the midst of calling and running plays. That, of course, is nonsense: no player capable of performing as the football hero here does, would be so distractible, and the points of this sequence could have been made otherwise. To sum up, this is a character drama, not really a football movie, and for the superficial movie-goer who is addicted to suspenseful, action- driven plots featuring stick-figure representations of humans, this mostly somber, realistic, but also nostalgic, movie is a guaranteed turnoff, and I advise such people not to waste their time with it - or to contaminate the ratings of a film that deserves so much more.This initially ponderous and depressing film, lightly disguised as an American sports melodrama, turns out to be an inspirational film after all, and it may be the most deeply American film I have ever scene - certainly this side of the 1960s. Thus, it is pretty much guaranteed to alienate, or simply to bore, the majority of professional critics, and in general those who think of themselves as belonging to the modern Liberal "elite" who rule the media these days. But for the minority of Americans for whom morality and traditional character and family values aren't altogether passé, this is a realistic but sympathetic exploration, and in the end a celebration, of rural American small town life, and no one need be ashamed to open their hearts to it, whatever the critics may say.