`GRIDIRON GANG' SCORES FEW GOALS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`Gridiron Gang,'' this week's inspiring urban sports movie, has more going for it than, say, ``Crossover.''

There's real inner-city danger, plentiful football action, credible characterizations (to the extent that they go, anyway, which isn't too deep) and it's based on a true story that's genuinely uplifting.

So why didn't I buy most of it?

That probably has to do with a button-pushing determination on the part of screenwriter Jeff Maguire that reduces practically every scene to an oversimplified emoticon. Cheer here, feel sorrow now, overcome that obstacle, respect yourself; it's like the audience is getting coached as hard as the movie's unlikely teenage athletes.

Set in (and filmed at) a youth detention center in the Santa Monica Mountains, ``Gridiron'' recounts the efforts of probation officer Sean Porter (Dwayne ``The Rock'' Johnson) to combat the 75 percent recidivism rate Camp Kilpatrick's young inmates suffered. Once a high-school football star himself, Porter proposes forming a team to teach the delinquents discipline, esteem and teamwork.

There are, of course, institutional barriers to getting this done. They get knocked down. Some of the delinquents aren't 100 percent on board with Coach Porter's plan. They come around. Porter isn't a perfect person, but he's as dedicated as 100 yards is long. The Kilpatrick Mustangs aren't exactly ready for prime time when they meet their first prep-school opponents. By the end of the season, though, they know what winning feels like.

And so forth. But amid all the pep talks and doubt-vanquishing, some decent dramatic plays get thrown. It's probably hokey on a number of levels, but the grudging respect between rival gang members Willie Weathers (Jade Yorker) and Calvin Owens (David Thomas) is movingly developed. Ditto an underplayed conflict involving Willie, his nice girlfriend and her understandably wary father.

< Then again, Porter's ailing mother (``Lost's'' L. Scott Caldwell) seems to be in the picture purely for a quick bit of bathos that's forgotten as soon as the next game comes around. And while it's nothing to make a big deal about, it's a little strange that Johnson's Porter is identified as African-American throughout the dramatized portion of the film, but when footage of the real coach plays during the closing credits, he looks pretty unmistakably Caucasian (both men have some Polynesian ancestry).

That just adds to the sense that ``Gridiron Gang'' could have been a truer -- meaning rougher, gnarlier and probably not as triumphant -- story. But director Phil Joanou is pretty adamant on the point that every boy who got sentenced to Camp Kilpatrick (or at least the ones who joined the team), was basically a good, sensitive kid who just needed to be shown a better way. We learn to become more fearful of the film's jittery camera work than we do of any violence-prone juvenile.

All that said, Porter's program has obviously improved many at-risk lives. It's worthy of a movie tribute. A better one just would have shown how difficult his job must have actually been.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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GRIDIRON GANG - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language)

Starring: Dwayne ``The Rock'' Johnson, Jade Yorker, Xzibit, David Thomas, Setu Taase.

Director: Phil Joanou.

Running time: 2 hr. 6 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Gritty yet superficial based-on-a-true-story about detention center youths turned into a formidable football team.

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To combat the high recidivism rate among juvenile offenders, probation officer Sean Porter (Dwayne ``The Rock'' Johnson) forms a football team made up of youth detention center inmates in ``Gridiron Gang.''