Suzanne Webb "Blue Chips" is a vastly under-rated sports film which deals with the shady dealings of colleges and their players. Nick Nolte plays a college basketball coach who is so desperate to return to his glory days that he breaks the rules by giving his newest recruits (Shaquille O'Neal, Anfernee Hardaway, and Matt Nover) basically anything they and their families want. School alumnus J.T. Walsh is the catalyst to these shady dealings and now the college has a winning team again, but at what price? "Blue Chips" is another one of William Friedkin's films that is much deeper than it first appears on the surface. With the exception of "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist", this is his finest film as a director. His documentary-style makes you feel as if you are in on all the action. Numerous parts are played by real basketball players and coaches, adding a great bit of realism to the story. "The French Connection" benefited from this style by having real cops in key roles and "The Exorcist" did the same having priests play themselves. Shaquille O'Neal, Anfernee Hardaway, and Matt Nover do surprisingly well with the material. They are all three-dimensional characters and shine throughout the film. However with that said, it is Nick Nolte who is the primary factor that makes the film well worth while. Far from perfect, but still a very good movie. 4 out of 5 stars.

RaoulGonzo Nick Nolte plays a college University basketball coach forced to break the rules in order to stay competitive. He deals with guilt and struggles internally with something he has always been against.What a surprise Blue Chips was, expecting a below par sports movie (based on reviews) but found a thought provoking and entertaining 110 minutes. To begin with it hits the normal sports movie beats but just when you think the drama is going one way, suddenly it doesn't and that only adds realism to the action.William Friedkin does an excellent job in creating a tense and real life atmosphere, almost documentary style at least during the game-play scenes that makes you feel fully immersed. It's clear Friedkin and co have thoroughly researched this area and you get a sense of that while watching. The use of real life Basketball players and coaches adds to the authenticity.During the drama the film deals with the shady dealings that no doubt goes on in American sports at college level (It's a massive deal, where careers and futures are made). A story of greed, cheating and pressure to win. Nolte is great in the role and gets to show off his soft side while also providing his well known manic style. Blue Chips really is an under-rated film although not perfect it deserves to be more well known.

Rodrigo Amaro The vicissitudes of winning or losing a game and doing the best you can to be successful at it whether playing clean or pulling some dirty tricks are what makes of "Blue Chips" an nice film whose main character played by Nick Nolte has to fight against the odds of losing another championship for another consecutive year. Here's a full-mouthed Basketball coach with lots of anger, high intelligence, knows how to conduct a team but he doesn't have much of a good team, and to built the team of his dream, he's gonna have to select new players but not in the traditional and right way by giving extra things to his players in order to get them on his team and also in college. He can't follow the rules by the book, the ones he created to himself in order to be successful at what he does but will he manage to play the game regardless of ethics?So, "Blue Chips" nicely builds its discourse of the importance of winning things in a fair way and shows how much someone can lose by breaking the rules. However, for a sport themed film this isn't so great as it could be, where's the director's energy to conduct the games scenes? It's not much involving when we have to watch the games but the dramatic and funny scenes compensates the trouble. Lacks energy, some thrills and at times even the dramatic sequences are monotonous and uninteresting. Nolte confuses extreme passion for a game with some overacting but he gives a decent performance here (but can you imagine Bob De Niro in this role? It would be excellent!). And along with him we have good supportive acting by Mary McDonnell, J.T. Walsh, Ed O'Neill and basketball legends Bob Cousy, Shaquille O'Neal among others. Right at the beginning Nolte gives this speech to the players about the impossibility of winning a game by being half-assed. You can do whatever half assed except winning. Wiser words were never spoken before and this film proves this when you have a great director like William Friedkin behind all this when it's quite visible he's not much suitable for this (and what's strange is Ron Shelton wrote this film and he's a specialist in making sport themed flicks, so why he didn't directed it in the first place?). So, in the end you can do things half-assed but just don't expect to win much sympathy, awards and recognition with it. Good film but it could've been better considering the talents involved. 6/10

chrisinaltoona I'm not a big sports movie guy, so I went into this not really expecting much other than killing 90 some minutes. I loved it! To see the struggle of a school and coach as they attempt to create a legit winning team in an environment of corruption was interesting. Then when they join that corruption it becomes exciting, you just know it's gonna blowup some time. Nick Nolte carries this film throughout it's entirety, and amazingly the real life players do a great job of acting and the rest of the cast is perfect. I love how they took real players and coaches and brought them into this film, it fits perfectly. The last 35 minutes of this film is brilliant. I've seen many people here talk of how bad this film is, I wonder if they just don't care about sports that much like myself, or have some underlying bias about admitting the corruption exists and always has in much of college sports. I don't care for sports! But I loved this film. The ratings this film gets on here really ticks me off, what is it, a 5.5 star average? I've learned one thing on here and other review sites, if you let others judge for you, you'll miss a lot of good movies.