Lance et compte / He Shoots, He Scores (DVD Review)

Image: Courtesy of eOne Films

Dir: Frédérik D'Amours (Noémie: Le secret, À vos marques... Party! 2, À vos marques... Party!)
Cast: Jason Roy-Léveillée, Marc Messier, Marina Orsini, Carl Marotte, Louise Portal
Canada, 2010

Reason to see: It's Canadian & I tend to enjoy sport films

Lance et compte / He Shoots, He Scores is centred on the Nationals hockey team and the challenges they fact after an unexpected disaster strikes the team. The film focus on the teams attempts with rebuilding and clashes within the hockey community as they try and find their way to who they are as individual, and as a team.

I was surprized that the film focuses a lot on the personal relationships and development of characters ranging from romantic to more traditional focuses of team dynamics and relationships within the sport and hockey world. One of the featured characters is Guy Lambert (Jason Roy-Léveillée) who as a born and bred hockey player has to balance romantic relationship(s) with his hockey involvement and all the dynamics that come out to play around them. His journey was quite compelling to watch, as was the team dynamics which are rocky over the course of the film but really ring true. I liked the coaching elements to the film as well, seeing the conventional, unconventional and out of left field things that they try to make everything work again. The spirit of trying to make things work really rides high here, and that's one of the things I loved about the film. It's shows a really trying circumstance but people want to fix it. They just don't know how.

While I enjoyed the dramatic tone of the film and the focus on relationships, I was surprized to see so much of it and anticipated seeing more hockey in the film. Everything is only 1 or 2 steps ever removed from the hockey connection, but I still thought there would be more action on the ice. That being said it holds it's own on a dramatic level in terms of storytelling, with compelling characters going through challenging circumstances while maintaining dignity and respect. The side plot of factory women felt a little odd to me, even though I appreciated the more rounded gender balance and attitude of how people can help each instead of revolt against each other.

DVD Extras (French only):

• Commentaire audio par Frédérik D'Amours et Caroline Heroux
• Making of Lance et compte (26 minutes)
• Scene coupees / Deleted Scenes (13 scenes, 11 minutes)
• Bloopers (5 minutes)
• Entrevues / Interviews (6 minutes) with Alex Kovalev (in English with French subtitles), Philippe Lalumière "Dave Morissette", Alain Crête and Vox Pop
• Bande-Annonce / Trailer

Lance et compte / He Shoots, He Scores is available on DVD as of March 1, 2011. Check it out over at Amazon.ca

Shannon's Overall View:
I enjoyed it
I'd watch it again
I'd recommend it to fans of drama-based sport films and hockey fans

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© Shannon Ridler, 2011


Jason Roy-Léveillée as Guy Lambert in Lance et compte. Courtesy of eOne Films.