This time, it's also based on a 1993 documentary (clips from that film, played during the closing credits, suggest that Jeff Maguire's script lifts heartfelt dialogue from actual people). And it's invigorated by the Rock, who makes the corniness slightly easier to bear. As Sean, manager of a youth detention facility, Dwayne Johnson is here rendered sensitive and vulnerable, as well as rowdy and rousing. He's frustrated by a system that seems designed to send kids through cycles of violence — in the streets, their homes and their juvey blocks — without changing expectations or possibilities. When Sean sees young Roger (Michael J. Pagan) killed in a drive-by shooting within hours of his release from Camp Kilpatrick, Sean despairs. His solution: organize the violence into football.

ROCK AS ROCKNE? The ex-wrestler coaches a ragtag bunch of inner-city kids. You know the drill.

Though his boss Paul (Leon Rippy) is predictably skeptical about spending his scant state-issued funds on such a body-slamming venture ("The whole system," he notes, "is designed to make them avoid contact"), Sean and his whistle-wearing assistant Malcolm (Xzibit) assemble a team of potential footballers and hard cases. Because they're inclined to defend their turf ("He dissed my hood!" explains one inmate following a scuffle), Sean figures he'll give them a new source of identification. "This is your hood now," he asserts, the kids gazing up at him with a mix of doubt and hope.

Some of the kids are distracted by the usual sorts of obstacles — Roger's cousin Willie (Jade Yorker) likes a girl Danyelle (Jurnee Smollett), Kenny (Trever O'Brien) is rejected by his mom. But this only makes them seem more ripe for rehabilitation and rescue by Sean (dealing with his own pain, in the form of his ailing mom). And so they engage in repeated drills of the montage sort, learning to tackle, catch and pass, to trust in their coach and appreciate his efforts to get them uniforms and a schedule. The Mustangs, as they're called, are inserted into a season opposing whole squads full of white kids with money and presumptions, whose coaches worry about them playing against "gangsters."

It's true, some of the Mustangs are exactly that. Kelvin (David V. Thomas) and Willie are affiliated with enemy organizations, which means Sean must squash longstanding tensions, convincing them to work together to conquer the greater foe, namely, the white kids with money. As in other versions of this movie, the system becomes embodied by these privileged, mostly anonymous rivals. When one of them goes so far as to call Willie the n-word, his defeat on the field is both ensured and just. In this movie that you've seen before, football is literal and metaphorical, a fantasy of fairness and achievable ambition.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)