Film / Take Down

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Take Down is a 1979 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Kieth Merrill, starring Edward Herrmann, Lorenzo Lamas, Kathleen Lloyd, Maureen McCormick, and Stephen Furst.

Mingo Junction High School hasn't beaten their rival Rockville in any sport for nine years. After a humiliating defeat at football, the seniors decide the best shot they have at winning is wrestling – and, with no other options, the new English teacher Ed Branish (Herrmann) is pressed into being their coach. It's up to Ed, a nerd with no experience with wrestling or much of anything besides Shakespeare, to somehow take this Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and turn them into a winning team. The key to victory might be recruiting Nick Kilvitus (Lamas), the extremely talented but conflicted student currently failing Branish's class...

A Box-Office Bomb, this film nevertheless was distributed (though not made) by Disney and thus has the distinction of technically being the first film the company released with a PG rating.

Due to its limited release, finding a physical copy somewhere can be difficult, though at the moment it is currently available on Youtube.

This show provides examples of:

• The Ace:
  • Leroy Baron. He is an "all-American super jock" good at both football and wrestling.
  • To a lesser extent on the good guy side, there's Washington—the only player on the team to never lose a match.
• Achilles in His Tent: A good chunk of the story is dedicated to convincing Nick to join and stay on the team. It takes a What the Hell, Hero? from Bobby about how he wants to stay on the team but can't because of his Soap Opera Disease, while Nick can but won't, to finally get him to commit for good.
• Advertised Extra: Brooke is featured prominently on most versions of the cover and given And Starring billing, but ultimately has absolutely no bearing on the plot and is merely a Satellite Love Interest. (It's her brother Bobby, not her, that finally motivates Nick into rejoining the team.)
• Agony of the Feet: How No-Toe became No-Toe: he was riding his bike one day and his toe got caught in the sprocket and cut off. And then his dog ate it.
• Alcoholic Parent: Nick's dad is frequently getting drunk and missing his shift, leading Nick to skip school to cover his shift at the steel mill.
• Answer Cut: Yacabobich wonders to himself who they can find to fill the 185-pound slot on the wrestling team to face Baron. The scene immediately cuts to Nick at the steel mill.
• Artistic License – Biology: Let's just say that Nick losing 3.5 pounds in an hour and a half to make weight for his match by sweating and running around the school—and still having endurance enough to wrestle afterwards—is extremely unlikely.
• Artistic License – Sports: Baron is clearly much too big to be in the 185 weight class, as easily seen by how he looms over his opponents.
• Bathroom Stall Graffiti: As read by Macgrudder, while awaiting his "cleansing bubble":
  "If you're too good for other folks—all mighty, high, and haughty—remember you're just one of us while you're here on this potty."
• Batman Gambit: When Washington tries to recruit Macgrudder for the team, Macgrudder at first refuses, saying he doesn't have the physique. Washington notices Macgrudder has eyes on one of the cute girls in the school and has her tell Macgrudder she loves wrestlers, knowing this will get him to join.
• Big Bad: Baron. He's not evil or even really that bad of a guy, but he is the single biggest obstacle between the Mingo Junction team and their goal of beating Rockville, making him this trope by default. The question of how exactly they're going to beat him looms over the film from almost the very first scene.
  Yacabobich: [Looking at the list of wrestling weight categories and the empty 185 slot] "Baron is going to be a problem."
• Big Game: The final wrestling meet against Rockville. It plays with the usual formula a bit: while Mingo Junction generally loses in the first half and makes up the gap in the second, they still win the very first match and their early losses are justified in that their best wrestlers are all in the heavier weight classes. Coach Branish also gives his rousing speech before the meet begins and doesn't give a second one later. Still, Yacabobich's match against Lardner ends with the standings such that Mingo Junction can only win if Nick gets a pin.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: While he doesn't die, Yacabobich—the biggest member of the team and the originator of the whole plan to wrestle—is the only one of the major named team members to lose his final match, setting the stakes for the final between Nick and Baron.
• Book and Switch: A non-raunchy example: Jill gives Ed a present of a rare and valuable Shakespeare book... only for Ed to find out it's actually a wrestling manual whose dust-jacket she swapped out to disguise it.
• Butt-Monkey: Randy doesn't win a single match and spends a good chunk of his screentime being tossed around by actual athletes.
• Chekhov's Skill: The headlock and throw that Ed practices on a patient Jill is later what Nick uses to turn the tables on Baron.
• Cringe Comedy: Jill valiantly acts as the Mingo Junction team's lone cheerleader in their first ever wrestling meet. The result is embarrassingly hilarious.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Mingo Junction's first wrestling match ends with embarrassing losses for the majority of the team, besides Washington and presumably also Yacabobich.
  • The first time we see Baron wrestle, he effortlessly pins his opponent within 20 seconds.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: Rockville's other champion athlete, the heavyweight Lardner, is similarly undefeated like Baron and has won each of his prior matches by pin. While he's still clearly better than Yacabobich and is an instant away from a pin by the time the match is called, Yacabobich puts up a good enough fight to hold him off.
• Dare to Be Badass: The Mingo Junction principal gives Ed Branish the job of wrestling coach and refuses to let him give up when Ed tries to quit, telling him there's more to coaching than wrestling and expecting him to have a team ready to compete for their first match.
• Dark Is Evil: Or at least Dark Is Rival. Rockwood High's classy uniforms are a shade of dark blue, which contrast well with Mingo Junction's (eventual) light grey uniforms.
• Decoy Protagonist: Yacabobich is the first major character introduced, leading out among the seniors in getting permission to form a wrestling team and getting more screentime than any of them. However, the protagonists of the story are ultimately Coach Branish and Nick, leading Yacabobich to end up a mix of The Big Guy and The Heart.
• Delayed Reaction: Ed is so focused on the final competition against Rockville that he replies to Jill's news that she's pregnant with a "Great. See you later", only realizing when he's halfway across the room.
• Despair Event Horizon: Nick hits this when he finds out he won't graduate. It causes him to first get himself disqualified from wrestling and then lash out at Brooke. He gets better after a talk with Bobby, though.
• Down to the Last Play: The score in the final meet is 27-32 for the final match between Nick and Baron, meaning Mingo Junction can only win if Nick pins Baron.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Nick Kilvitus' first scene is him covering his dad's shift at the local steel mill... and effortlessly picking up a heavy I-beam by himself.
  • The first we see of Baron is him easily scoring a touchdown and celebrating about it.
• Evil Is Bigger: Baron is noticeably larger and more muscular than Nick. Brings up some Fridge Logic of how he passes the weight requirements when Nick has to work to meet them.
• Fanservice: Lots of muscular young men in this movie, often going shirtless (or close to it.)
• Final Boss Preview: At a double wrestling meet, Nick gets to watch Baron demolish his hapless opponent in seconds.
• Fish Out of Water: Ed Branish, a stick-thin English-teaching nerd, is assigned to coach a wrestling team full of jocks. At first he is horrified and clueless as to what to do, but with a little help and encouragement from Jill, he starts to value his young men, takes to the task, and learns how to teach and motivate them—with a few Shakespeare quotes still dropped along the way.
• Flawless Token: Washington comes close to playing it straight by winning each of his matches, but Macgrudder averts it, losing every match until his last.
• Gentle Giant: Yacabobich is the largest member of the cast and one of the nicest, especially seen in how he takes care of Bobby.
• The Ghost: Radman the Mingo Junction football coach is curiously given a name despite never appearing.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: The final match pits dark-haired Nick vs. blonde Baron.
• Heroic RRoD: Bobby abruptly collapses during one of his matches despite wanting to continue—the first sign he's caught his Soap Opera Disease.
• Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: Macgrudder's opponent on the Rockville team is wearing a Jason-esque mask over his face, though naturally he lacks a chainsaw. (Surprisingly, this film came out three years before Jason donned the mask.)
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: It's implied Nick is able to beat Baron because Baron wears himself out using a lot of (frankly impressive) full-body lifts and slams against him.
• Hold the Line: Yacabobich vs. Lardner. It's clear Yacabobich can't beat him, but if he can hold him off long enough for a time-out, Nick can still pull out a win against Baron.
• Honor Before Reason: When Coach Branish learns Nick's graduation has been denied, he decides to tell Nick right before his match so that if Nick was only competing to get Branish's English lessons and graduate, he can sit his match out. This backfires spectacularly by making Nick mad and getting him disqualified from wrestling.
• Jerk Jock: Downplayed. The closest the film gets to one, Baron, seems arrogant but has no real villainous qualities or Kick the Dog moments.
• Kick the Dog: The wrestling referee isn't a pleasant man, but considering what he has to put up with from our goofy heroes, his attitude's mostly understandable. He gets two moments of uncalled-for nastiness, though: first, he insults Nick's background by calling him trash, and second, he cuts the cord to Macgrudder's record player so he can't play Palumbo's music.
• The Lancer: Chauncey Washington to Yacabobich. They're the two best wrestlers on the team when it's first formed and the most invested in keeping the team going. Washington, however, usually lets Yacabobich take the lead in motivating the others, and when Yacabobich doubts Branish's coaching credentials, Washington sticks up for Branish.
• The Leader: While Nick is The Hero and gets the final match against Baron, he joins the team late and isn't present for many of their matches. It's Yacabobich who had the idea for the team and leads out most often in organizing and motivating them when Coach Branish isn't around.
• Leitmotif: Baron gets one, with menacing lower brass.
• Light Is Good: The Mingo Junction wrestling team is so bare-bones at the beginning that for their first few matches they don't even have uniforms. By the time they start getting their act together, however, they get light grey jerseys in contrast to their rival Rockwood's dark blue ones.
• Lovable Jock: As the story revolves around a wrestling team, a huge portion of the cast are these, though Yacabobich is probably the best example. They aren't afraid to use their status as seniors and athletes to influence other people in the school, but their intentions are good and they're mostly nice guys.
• Man Bites Man: In a wrestling match, nobody bites like Macgrudder!
• Mauve Shirt: Kier, the quarterback of the Mingo Junction football team, is originally set up to be one of the main student characters alongside Yacabobich, but he mostly disappears after the first few scenes and we don't even see his final match (which it's implied he lost.) The role of Yacabobich's Lancer is instead filled by Washington.
• Mistaken for Badass: The team is so nonplussed by their English teacher being assigned as their wrestling coach that Washington concludes Mr. Branish must actually be a skilled wrestler or he'd never take the job. Yacabobich decides to test this theory, though fortunately Ed's practiced a few moves by this point on Jill and pulls off a takedown, forever silencing his team's doubts.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Rockville's heavyweight wrestler Lardner is noticeably less trim than his teammate Baron, but he's clearly more muscular and in better shape than Yacabobich, which gives him an advantage over his fatter fellow heavyweight.
• The Oner: The beginning of the final match between Nick and Baron is a 45-second shot, giving the viewer ample time to see that yes, the actor for Leroy Baron really can throw around Lorenzo Lamas like that.
• Opposing Sports Team: Rockville High, the school that's beaten Mingo Junction in every single sport for nine years.
• Promotion to Parent: Nick ends up taking his father's place as the main breadwinner of the family, and the way he carries his dad home and puts him to bed means the roles of father and son are reversed between them.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman!: Randy will be the first to tell you he's a musician, not an athlete, which means he's pretty much useless as Nick's replacement as the 185-pound wrestler on the team. However, his musical skills help save the day when he plays Palumbo's song during the final meet.
• Redshirt Army: Mingo Junction's 105, 112, 119, and 126-weight wrestlers aren't named in-film, don't get any lines, and all lose their final matches against Rockville.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • The Mingo Junction principal approves the students' idea for a wrestling team, decides Ed Brannish is more up to the task of being a coach than he thinks, and gives him some good advice about coaching.
  • Coach Kawa of the Rockville wrestling team is a pretty chill guy, too, agreeing to let Nick compete despite his earlier disqualification and switching the 185 and heavyweight matches to buy Nick more time. It's clear his team is good as a result of his excellent coaching, not just because of Baron and Lardner's talent.
• Rules Lawyer: The wrestling referee is naturally this; though willing to make a few exceptions due to Branish and the team's inexperience in their first match, he strictly enforces the rules later on. Branish later turns this on the ref to excuse bringing a boombox to a match to play Palumbo's Theme Music Power-Up, saying he can't find anything about it in the rules.
• Satellite Love Interest: Brooke doesn't do much in the film besides be a love interest for Nick.
• '70s Hair: Naturally, seeing this film was made in 1979, though Nick, Baron, and Lardner are the best examples.
• Shabby Heroes, Well-Dressed Villains: At first, the Mingo Junction team doesn't even have wrestling uniforms, with everyone wearing their own outfits. Rockville, on the other hand, wears immaculate dark blue wrestling jerseys, visually showing the vast gap in training and resources between them and Mingo Junction. By the final match Mingo Junction now has jerseys and equipment of their own, but Rockville's are still obviously more expensive and higher-quality.
• Silent Antagonist: Baron never talks (at least, not that the audience can hear), presumably to make him feel more like a force of nature to the audience.
• Soap Opera Disease: It's never specified what exactly Bobby's sick of, just that it keeps him from competing in the final match.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Invoked and exploited with a diegetic in-universe example: Palumbo is all but undefeatable when his special music is playing. Once the team figures this out, they spend the rest of the movie finding ways to play the song to make sure he wins his matches.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • Macgrudder's reaction to seeing his masked Rockville opponent is to turn around and mutter a silent "Why?" to the sky.
  • Downplayed example earlier: when Nick first sees Baron wrestle, his flat expression and the way he pushes the inside of his cheek with his tongue show he's realizing that at some point, as Mingo Junction's 185-pound wrestler, he has to find a way to beat that.
• Training Montage: Nick gets one in preparation for the final match. He runs around the countryside, lifts some weights, and does some sit-ups with some help from his dad.
• Underestimating Badassery: While watching Nick's first wrestling match, Baron turns to Coach Kawa, shakes his head, and seems to say (though you can't hear it over the crowd's yelling) "I don't think so," implying he isn't impressed with Nick.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Cleansing bubble" for taking a poo.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Ed Branish is bookish, introverted, and arrogant; his wife Jill is much more friendly and energetic and even a bit of a good-natured prankster at times. Still, their marriage is mostly a happy one, and only improves along with Ed's Character Development.
• Uptown Girl: Played for Drama. Brooke comes from a well-off family, while Nick is poor. Nick's insecure about it: when Brooke offers to drive him home, he tries to get her to drop him off before she reaches his house so she won't see how low-income it is. Downplayed in that the two still go to the same school and Brooke's family is upper middle-class at best, and if anything Nick's more bitter about her parental situation than her money.
• Villainy-Free Villain: Baron seems arrogant, the opening football game shows he's maybe not quite as gracious a winner as he could be, and a comment from the ref before the final match ("I want a clean fight. Both of you") implies he might've had an issue there in the past. And... that's it. He doesn't cheat, he doesn't taunt the heroes, and outside of the matches he doesn't do anything illegal or mean.
• The Voiceless: At no point does the audience ever hear Baron speak. We see him talking to Coach Kawa while watching Nick compete halfway through the film, but it's drowned out by the noise of the crowd.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After learning he isn't going to graduate from high school, Nick gets mad at Brooke by telling her that, coming from a wealthy, intact home, she doesn't understand people like him. It's only when Nick talks to Bobby that Nick realizes that while he does face economic and academic difficulties, he also isn't dying like Bobby is, and needs to put aside his resentment and help the team.
• You Can Barely Stand: Nick is already exhausted and dehydrated from making weight before he goes up against Baron.
• You Say Tomato: In a brief moment of racial tension, Kier makes fun of how Macgrudder says "cotton" and Macgrudder tells him to back off.