Product Details

• Actors: Nick Nolte, Charles Durning, Mac Davis, Dayle Haddon, Bo Svenson
• Directors: Ted Kotcheff
• Writers: Ted Kotcheff, Frank Yablans, Nancy Dowd, Peter Gent, Rich Eustis
• Producers: Frank Baur, Frank Yablans
• Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Paramount
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 119 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300216659
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #186,030 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

A very savvy, 1978 film directed by Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) dealing with the seamier side of professional football. Phillip Elliott and Maxwell (Nick Nolte and Mac Davis, respectively) are players for a Texas football team loosely based on the championship Dallas Cowboys. Though at the peak of his football career, Elliott is a personal and physical mess, needing all manner of drugs prescribed by the team physician to play and even to move around. The indifference of the team management and the hypocritical stance toward recreational drug use versus the drug abuse practiced by the players leads to a crisis of conscience for Nolte. The combination of Nolte's volatile presence and Davis's understated performance as the quarterback who thinks he's seen it all helps make North Dallas Forty one of the best sports films around. --Robert Lane

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Seamy side of American institution, October 4, 2000

By 

George Schaefer - See all my reviews

This review is from: North Dallas Forty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie really blew the lid off a lot of the shenanigans that go on in professional sports. I'm sure that many were upset with the portrayal of athletes as drunken, pill popping idiots but that was probably a reality back then. This movie precedes Any Given Sunday by two decades and still hits harder in its revelation of football's seamy side. Nick Nolte is superb as Phil Elliott. Mac Davis also gives a fine performance. The scenes of athletes being shot up with painkillers to play is intense. The laissez faire attitude of coaches and team owners is probably more realistic than the NFL would care to admit. I love the scene when Nolte gets suspended for smoking marijuana and his response is that the team is injecting harder drugs into him each Sunday just so he can play. That kind of mirrors the insanity and stupidity of the NFL drug testing policies even today. Football is an American institution but indeed there is a dark side. This movie does a fine job of pointing that out.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Film About Football, NOT A Football Film, January 27, 2005

By 

E. VANDERWOLF "80's Horror Guru" (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: North Dallas Forty (DVD)

I remember this coming out when I was a kid. I also remember I wasn't allowed to see it other than in its butchered form on Network Television. Now I know why.

This is a fantastic film. One thing that struck me is that for a football film, there is very little actual football in it. Which is the reason for the title of my review. This film is ABOUT football... not a football film. It's about the players in a time when the league was still young and, I dare say, corrupted by the use of pain killers and alochol. It was the hey dey of the Cowboys, the Raiders and the Steelers and football players were treated like Rock Stars.

It's the film "Any Given Sunday" wanted to be. But failed miserably at even being a cheap imitation.

If you loved 1970's films and 1970's football, this film is a must see.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For movie lovers and football fans, May 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: North Dallas Forty [VHS] (VHS Tape)

NORTH DALLAS FORTY delivers first-rate entertainment. Football fans will note stinging parodies of a few famous NFL players/coaches. Among quality performances from Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, Charles Durning and the late John Matuszak, actor Bo Svenson stands out. Svenson adds depth to what could have been a cartoonish role of an immature, stupid muscle-head, and it is unfortunate that I have not seen him in anything else this good. The film's poster makes NORTH DALLAS FORTY look as though it is a pro football version of ANIMAL HOUSE. Sure, NORTH DALLAS FORTY is funny at times, but the film also takes on the abuses in big league sports and management's selective enforcement of the rules. Sports journalists, let alone other sports films, ought to address those issues as boldly.