Hollywood has had its fair share of sports films and football movies in general. North Dallas Forty, The Express, and Rudy are a few that come to mind. Riley, on the other hand, doesn’t deal with as much football in it as it deals with human relationships and character development. The game of football is more on the periphery of this story. It’s constantly there in the background, but not played like the other films I’ve mentioned.

Riley (Jake Holley) is a high school student just entering his senior year. He has six offers to go to division one school to play reliever. His plans are to catch twelve touchdowns and get a thousand receiving yards. The best plans of mice and men often go astray as they say. Riley has other things going on in his life. He has a girlfriend Skyler (Riley Quinn Scott), who he likes quite a bit, but something else gets in the way of their relationship. He’s gay!

This is a coming-of-age story that has a modern context to it. This kind of story couldn’t have been told thirty years ago. It’s the kind of film nobody would have watched. It was hard for me to watch while I was sitting there in the theater. There were some moments that weren’t easy to stomach for me. Multiple scenes of the main character trying to figure out his sexuality were not easily digestible.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt this way.

A framing device that was originally a short film that was expanded into a full-length feature worked very well, though. Seeing the main character try to explore his sexuality in this way made more sense to me, but I guess you had to have both areas of exploration to make the film have more of an emotional heft. Two boys in school he’s attracted to are the quarterback of his team Jaeden (Colin McCalla) and Liam (Connor Sorrie). They help him figure out what his true self is regarding his sexual preference.  It’s not an easy decision for this young man. I was genuinely moved by how the director Benjamin Howard handled these scenes and plot points in the film.

I’ve coached football for many years earlier in my life and seeing how Howard implemented the locker room scenes and the coaching and motivational stuff was very good. He as an ex-player himself understood these parts of the story very well. The dialogue that the kids and father/coach Carson Riley (Rob Hillis) said was spot on in these scenes. As a writer, he understood how these characters would interact with the main character in the story. The script was very well written by Howard.  It’s one of the strengths of the movie for sure.

In this day and age, more and more LGBT-centric films are coming out, no pun intended, which means more stories about this subsection of our population are being explored by filmmakers. Howard understands the subject matter he’s dealing with here very well. He touches on some topics a lot of people wouldn’t touch, that is high school football and locker room behavior.  This has been something that isn’t easy to discuss. This movie puts it out in the open for said discussion.  Jake Holley as an actor scored a touchdown. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He expressed every emotion on his face while playing this character. The story demanded that. The subject matter and his performance are the keys to why this film works so well.

Riley is going to make people cringe in a good way. Howard deals with some difficult subject matter that isn’t easy to watch. The exploration of a high school kid’s sexuality isn’t an easy story to put on film. Especially since it involves football and the locker room. The relationships are handled very well including the header asexual one. This is a movie a lot of coaches and high school kids should watch. It’s going to open some eyes. That’s what films should do though. Make people question themselves and ask questions about society. Holley was exceptional in the lead role and Howard handled these topics perfectly in the script and with his direction.  This is a must-see.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen