CinemaNow - The Slaughter Rule

Set against the bleak, beautiful rural Montana landscape, this debut feature from twin brothers Alex and Andrew Smith is a complex portrayal of an unlikely friendship. Roy Chutney is a talented high-school football quarterback who learns two pieces of bad news in quick succession: His estranged father has been killed in what may have been a suicide, and he is cut from the football team. Lonely, alienated and with no outlet for his pain except for alcohol, Roy is approached by Gideon, a stranger in town, who recruits the young athlete to play on the tough, brutal six-man football team he is in the process of organizing. As the relationship between the pair deepens, Roy begins to question Gideon's motives and his own responses to them, slowly learning the value of compassion and the responsibility necessary to guide him to adulthood in a culture that promotes machismo, violence and rugged independence. "