Merrick here...

Here's Oobie Doobie Kanoobie with a look at GRIDIRON GANG, a football-in-prison flilck starring Dwane Douglas Johnson (The Rock)!

I really like The Rock, although I think he's still looking for just the right starring vehicle. I haven't seen GRIDIRON, so I can't say if this is it. I think THE RUNDOWN was close -- a lot of fun and surprisingly cool. But , I believe there's at least one dose of out of the park kickassity coming our way from The Rock...and I can't wait 'till it gets here.

Anyone ever see The Rock on Letterman talking about loosing his virginity? "The best fifteen seconds of that girl's life!" Totally tough guy-yet-self defacing. Hilarious.

Here's Oobie...

Hi This is my first time writing in and I just got back from a screening of The Rock's new movie Gridiron Gang. I live in Wichita Kansas and we rarely get sneak peeks since we're an ass backwards town. Good thing it wasn't a movie about evolution or there might have been a protest, but any ways. I attached the Movie Pass and the Survey pics.

The movie was great! The chemisrty of the whole cast was also great. The running time was 2 hours and 10 minutes and the movie seemed to go by at a very good pace.

BEWARE SPOILERS

The movie starts out with all the inmates in bed and the camera pans to show one of the boys pulling his pillowcase off and wrapping it around his fist. He gets up and he then creeps over to another inmate and starts to beat the hell out of him.

From there he gets sent to the box...which is pretty much a holding cell if you've ever been to jail or the hole. This is when we get the intro to The Rock's character. He walks in the cell and starts to smack the kid in the head with a rolled up amgazine, and gives him a heart to heart. He tells him that he's going home the next day and he needs to start thinking straight & he asks him where he thinks he'll be when he's 21. He said he didn't know and The Rock tells him that he'll be dead.

Then we go to the next day when the young inmates out and he's hanging out with his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend,when some of the old gang members he used to hang with come up and tell him that somethings goin down and they want to know if he's coming along. He tries to walk away when his cousin talks him into coming along Dudes girl walks off pissed.

Just as they're getting ready to go, a car pulls up and starts to shoot at ( and then kills) one of the guys. So our two leads take off running to get away in a really intense scene. The scene ends when the young man that was just release from jail gets run over, the scene is very graphic for PG-13 movie.

Then the cousin named Willie comes across some of the other gang members of his set and they tell him that he should take care of the situation. He ends up screwing that up and he goes home. When he gets there he talks to his mom, realizing that she has bruises on her face. He sees that her boyfriend is there & starts to fight with Willie and his mom, so Willie pulls out the gun he had to get back at his cousin's killer & shoots and kills his moms boyfriend.

We are then taken to the Juvenile center, and are introduced to the cast of characters that will be our team. We find out why our main group are in there & why The Rock wants to start the team. We then get the start of the team. The Rock lays down the rules and were off and running.

They have 3 weeks to train before there first game, and then we get the usual football movie of the game and first loss. But, a lot of people & I do mean a lot in the theatre, thought that they where gonna win there first game.

From the first game on, the crowd gets really into the movie, not to say they were before, they where cheering plays and you could tell that they were getting emotionally envolved in the characters. Not just The Rock or Xzibit, but all the boys on the team as well.

The scene when they win the final game so that they're in the playoffs ends on a very emotional note.

Willie and a rival gang member have now started to get along. Some of Willies gang buds show up, and the one that told him that he needed to take care of his cousins killer shows up. After the game , he walks out to the feild and shoots him in the stomach dropping him to the field. The dude has the gun pointed at his head when Willie runs up and tackles him. The gunman runs, and is then gunned down by the cops just outside the gates of the field.

The ending was predictible, but not corny. Like I said, they did real well with everything. There were times when things could have gone corny and stupid, but they stayed very "real" with it all.

At the end you get a small recap of where the some of the boys ended up after they left. The crowd cheered at the end of the movie. And, like I said, during much of the movie as well.

All in all I highly recommend this film. I like pretty much everything about it. The jokes where funny, the characters interesting, and the camera work was cool as well.

The Rock was great.

Xzibit not much to say in the film, but was very good in the role. I would and could see him in more serious role in the furture.

The team all had great chemistry, and they all looked like they could have come from the streets.

At the end of the film, I was asked to fill out a card... and I did. I asked the lady in charge if this was the final version, and she said she'd never been asked that before. So I don't know if it is or not but I found it to be very good.

Sorry some of the film is not talked about... I'm tired and hands starting to hurt.

Thanks for the write-up, Oobie.

The film hits on September 15 -- it's safe to assume what you saw was the final version. If not, it's reeeeaaaallllyyyy close it.