A MATTER OF HONOR is a low-budget, ineptly produced drama about a college rugby coach and the impact he has on his students' lives. The film sloppily combines romantic drama, sports action and social commentary into a pretentious and confusing narrative. The coach's relationships with his
students may have been modeled after DEAD POET'S SOCIETY (1989) or several classic sports films, but his character and the film are completely devoid of excitement or inspiration, which makes A MATTER OF HONOR tedious and laughable.
John Bull (Jackson Bostwick) is a history teacher and rugby coach at St. Cyr College. His students and peers respect him for his values of honor, tradition and discipline. Nick Raider (Allen Arkus) is a former teammate of Bull's, and the two are arch enemies. While Bull plays by the rules and
believes that you must win in a clean, respectable way, Raider plays dirty, to win at any cost. Bull meets and falls in love with St. Cyr's new Chemistry professor, VeronicaBennett (Rebecca Gray). Bull is stubborn, staid and old-fashioned, and Veronica's free-spirited nature is a good influence on
him.
Raider, who coaches a pro rugby team, meets Michael, captain of St. Cyr's team, and challenges St. Cyr to a scrimmage. During the scrimmage, Michael is accidentally killed by a cheap shot from one of Raider's players. After the game, Bull is jumped and attacked by Raider and a friend. Many people
at the school blame Michael's death on Bull. Students leave his class en masse, his career is endangered and Veronica breaks up with him. Bull challenges Raider to a duel. Raider fires his gun early by accident, but Bull had loaded the guns with blanks. Raider admits that he told his player to
hurt Michael. Bull's students, and Veronica, return to him in dramatic fashion.
A MATTER OF HONOR's terrible acting is made even worse by idiotic, cliched dialogue, a confusing, barely explained narrative, and the lack of a single original idea. The whole film is basically a setup for the climactic showdown between Bull and Raider, an event that is a huge letdown. By that
point, the contrived story and one-dimensional characters try the audience's patience, and the sequence is too brief and too confusing to have any impact. The final scene, where students stream into Bull's classroom, is a direct reference to DEAD POET'S SOCIETY, which does nothing but magnify A
MATTER OF HONOR's inferiority.
It's hard to understand why a film about an American college uses rugby as a subject. If A MATTER OF HONOR had been well written, the novelty of the sport would be exciting, but the game sequences are so inauthentic and blandly presented that no rugby novice will learn or care about the game. In
addition, the leads, Bull and Veronica, are a completely unappealing romantic couple. He is so stiff and dry that it seems unlikely that any woman would find him attractive, especially an outgoing, vivacious woman like Veronica. Her use of cliches ("time to party,") and overly dramatic gestures
will try the patience of any viewer who doesn't already have a headache from the inappropriate use of terrible soft rock music and inappropriately loud sound effects. (Violence, profanity, sexual situations.) leave a comment