National Champions

It's very intense, very present day, and I liked it a lot.

While not a perfect film, National Champions does express the discourse around an important issue in a compelling way.

The message is still worth contemplating, but lacking a better vehicle to convey it, feels more deserving of analysis on sports pages than the entertainment space.

He's fighting for compensation for other student-athletes, but other meandering, arbitrary plotlines keep slowing the story's momentum.

National Champions devotes most of its time to a contest to see which of its multi-talented cast members can utter the worst dialogue or reveal the most absurd nighttime soap opera plot twists.

[Mervis'] playbook of plot devices too often leans on gimmicky twists to propel the narrative: a lazy love affair; a conveniently covered-up crime; and a tragedy that drops out of nowhere.

National Champions is far from a perfect movie, but it’s one hell of an entertaining one.

Even when maybe it’s one twist too far, it’s still a deeply compelling expose on the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the danger of the “warrior” mentality that makes college athletes second-class citizens in their own sports.

National Champions treads preachy, but makes an overall compelling argument against a skewed college athletics system.

Paying college athletes - a timely subject for a movie...