Review No.32: Goon

It's interesting the preconceptions you form before watching a film for example take Goon from the poster which sees Seann William Scott smiling with a mouth full of bloody teeth from this I imagined a film that saw Stifler playing ice hockey for 90 minutes but how wrong I was. Though I've seen William Scott play slightly different roles in Southland Tales and Stark Raving Mad for the majority of the past thirteen years he's been portraying the same character that he did in 1999's American Pie. I can safely say that in Goon we see Scott give his best performance ever as Doug a slightly slow bouncer who finds a career as an ice hockey player who can take a beating. After protecting his friend, who hosts a low-rent hockey show, he catches the eye of a local manager but soon is drafted to the big time playing for the Halifax Highlanders. In his role as an enforcer he soon becomes a team favourite however his team-mate and flatmate Xavier LaFlamme isn't happy with this popularity seeing Doug as a thug or a goon rather than a proper ice hockey player. It is this theme that plays throughout the film as Doug's role as an enforcer is more about him beating up the other team players that is about the finesse that Xavier has and Doug also fails to gain the approval of his parents. In addition there is a romantic subplot featuring Doug falling for Alison Pill's Eva a hockey fan who has a boyfriend but is strangely attracted to his aggressive nature.

I have to say Goon is a strange mix of sports film, comedy and character-led drama with Seann William Scott making the most of a slightly underwritten character. I thought Scott was certainly the standout in this film fleshing out the role of Doug into someone who has always been seen as second best but is trying to make something out of his life with the skill set that he has been given. His romance with Eva is certainly the sweetest thing about this very violent film and where he tells her that he has a major crush on her you can't help but smile. As well as the violence, which isn't that excessive given the subject manner, to me I found there was an overuse of bad language especially from Jay Baruchel's character but then along with Judd Apatow regular Evan Goldberg he did write the script so he obviously wanted to swear a lot here. Apparently this is based on a true story but obviously it wasn't that interesting as I felt the film ended too soon and it really seemed that Baruchel and Golberg wanted to trick the audience into thinking there was more left but I never felt that there was any resolution to Doug's inner turmoil which was the point of the film in the first place.

Verdict: A great performance from Scott and a sweet romantic subplot gives this violent and foul-mouthed film some heart however it ends too quickly so I'll give it 6.5/10