Quartile rating: 6/10 · 2 ratings
Doug Glatt, a slacker who discovers he has a talent for brawling, is approached by a minor league hockey coach and invited to join the team as the "muscle." Despite the fact that Glatt can't skate, his best friend, Pat, convinces him to give it a shot, and Glatt becomes a hero to the team and their fans, until the league's reigning goon becomes threatened by Glatt's success and decides to even the score.
Goon is a charming, foul-mouthed underdog sports comedy that rises above its modest premise thanks to genuine heart and a surprisingly earnest lead performance from Seann William Scott. The plot follows familiar sports-movie beats — misfit finds purpose, earns respect, faces a climactic showdown — but the minor-league hockey milieu and the film's affectionate, unsentimental treatment of fighting as a blue-collar craft give it enough personality to stand out. Scott brings unexpected warmth to Doug Glatt, and Liev Schreiber is quietly menacing as the aging rival goon, elevating the material. The cinematography is functional and unremarkable, fitting for a low-budget Canadian production but never distinctive. The ending delivers the emotional payoff the film earns without subverting expectations, landing solidly if predictably. Novelty is modest — it's not reinventing the genre — but it occupies a specific niche (the lovable enforcer story) with enough sincerity and crude charm to feel like its own thing.