"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.

Money corrupts in "Blue Chips", one of director William Friedkin's better films. It stars the always watchable Nick Nolte as a basketball coach who breaks regulations, rules and bribery statutes in order to put together a winning team.Nolte often plays tortured characters who crumble under the weight of guilt and self-hatred. Here his character, Pete Bell, starts off as a confident con-man but eventually becomes a hunchbacked wreck. In the film's climactic sequence (possibly informed by a decade's worth of NCAA athletic scandals), Bell stands before journalists and delivers an almighty confession, denouncing the corruption which spawns organically from systems reliant upon profit, loss and winning at any cost. Evocative of "And Justice For All", which featured a similar last-act rant by Al Pacino, the film also anticipates Spike Lee's "He Got Game", another basketball flick which milks similar themes.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

Blue Chips gives us a view of high pressure college sports.It is a film about basketball that stars Nick Nolte as a college coach,Pete Bell,who was based loosely on Coach Bob Knight of Texas Tech,together with real- life basketball stars Shaquille O'Neal,Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway and Matt Nover as talented recruits.Blue Chips examines greed, cheating, and "winning at all costs" in the world of college basketball. Pete Bell is the stressed-out coach on the verge of his first losing season, who hits the road in search of new players not already signed by a bigger school. He finds three prospects: a precision Chicago shooter Butch McRae,a giant farm boy Ricky Roe and a talented troublemaker Neon.All three top prospects, wise to the ways of college basketball recruitment, make excessive financial and lifestyle demands before they can be persuaded to come to the school.Coach Bell, already haunted by accusations of underhanded dealings, doesn't want to dig himself a deeper hole but has no choice. The movie was started really well.Director William Friedkin and Writer Ron Shelton made an accurate depiction of the reality of college recruitment and the morality play that schools figure in on the college sports.There was also a story about how college players get involved with game fixing themselves.The acting was great on Nick Nolte as usual.While the performance of Shaq was good for his first screen appearance.But in the end,it "chickened out" and opted for an implausible conclusion and resolved for a Hollywood ending.But given its poor ending,Blue Chips is still an entertaining movie to watch especially for basketball fans.

Pete Bell is a college basketball coach. He's under pressure to win and is under pressure to get the players by any means necessary. How will he stand up to the pressure or will he give in to pressure?Basketball movies are often the `weak team overcomes' type and are not exactly great. Some are good (Hoosiers) but most are mildly distracting at best (The air up there), few reach the heights of Hoop Dreams. However Blue Chips is good because it manages to cast a critical eye over the real world of college ball – there are no small town winners, there are no `kids with hearts of gold' etc – instead it is as much a business as the NBA and the stakes are high to get the best players.Bell shows us how he must juggle doing what's right but also doing what the players want in order to get a winning team. This is refreshing – rather than yet another sports movie with the same old cliches. The down side is that it doesn't go far enough in my mind and it doesn't offer solutions.Nolte is good and is really convincing as a coach – even if he's a bit OTT at times on the sidelines. His support is great in the form of McDonnell, Walsh, Woodard and the real players of Shaq and Penny do OK. The cast is also filled out with plenty of coaches, commentators and such from real life – so there's plenty to see.Overall this is one of my favourite basketball movies simply because it tells it like it is – even if it does have it's weaknesses.