Gridiron Gang  Opens at Metro and other theaters, Fri., Sept.
15. Rated PG-13. 120 minutes.  Former pro wrestler Dwayne "the
Rock" Johnson, who always made a good show of selling fake
violence, stars in Phil Joanou's well-meant trifle as an
idealistic corrections officer who starts a football team at a
juvenile detention center in L.A. Never mind the obvious
parallels to The Longest Yard and Remember the Titans; what we
get here is one huge, indigestible sports-movie platitude. The
troubled, belligerent teenagers are variously appealing—Jade
Yorker as a gangbanger who shot his mother's abusive boyfriend,
Paul Higa as the team's talented but insecure quarterback,
Trever O'Brien as the token white boy, etc.—but it's just
another overdose of inspiration, pure and simple, about Winning
and Losing. As the Rock himself would have to acknowledge, it
means to be the Charging Double-Leg Spinebuster of football-
coach hero stories.  That the movie's based on what Hollywood
always likes to call a "true story" makes littl