The Slaughter Rule (2002)

Synopsis: Winter in Montana and everything breaks down. Just days after his estranged father dies, Roy Chutney gets cut from his high school football team. Football, for Roy, meant more than a proving ground— it promised escape from his lonely rural existence and salvation from the passivity that... Winter in Montana and everything breaks down. Just days after his estranged father dies, Roy Chutney gets cut from his high school football team. Football, for Roy, meant more than a proving ground— it promised escape from his lonely rural existence and salvation from the passivity that dominates his life.

Joined by his best friend, Tracy Two Dogs, (a Blackfoot Indian with no small trouble of his own) Roy drowns his frustration in a mixture of tequila and self-pity. But in Blue Springs, Montana, alcohol begets violence, and the soon-reached limits of small-town Saturday night only add brutality to Roy's despair.

Enter Gideon Ferguson, a canny giant of a man who ekes out a life among barflies, hawking newspapers in the two a.m. nether world of closing time. Gid is seeking "gamers"—kids who scrap hard— to play on his Six-Man football squad, and he recruits Roy to be his quarterback.

Over the course of the season, Gid and Roy enter into a tenuous friendship. For Gid, the football team provides a sense of purpose in a life nearly bled dry. For Roy, the game is a pure response to life— if you break enough tackles and keep sprinting for open ground, you might outrun your inside trouble. It's as if they complete each other: Roy permits Gid a dimension of grace, a glimmer of innocence Gid has never known; Gid grants Roy a portal into adulthood.

Entering Gid's world, Roy becomes witness to a tender side of Gid, who constantly looks after his old pal Studebaker, a sad-luck drifter. More importantly for Roy, the honky-tonk nightlife introduces him to Skyla, a dark-eyed bartender several years Roy's senior. Their burgeoning romance and Roy’s growing friendship with Gid collide, complicating all of their lives.

The Slaughter Rule is a rough season in a young man's life, a season of exposure, prejudice, and ultimately - compassion. -- © Cowboy Pictures [More]