The Slaughter Rule

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The Slaughter Rule
The Slaughter Rule movie poster.
Directed by	Alex Smith and Andrew J. Smith
Written by	Alex Smith and Andrew J. Smith
Starring	Ryan Gosling David Morse
Distributed by	Cowboy Entertainment
Release date(s)	2002
Running time	112 minutes
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Slaughter Rule is an independent film, released in 2002 and starring Ryan Gosling and David Morse. The movie, set in contemporary Montana, explores the relationship between a small-town high school football player (Gosling), and his troubled coach (Morse). The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

Filming for the movie largely took place in Great Falls, Montana and a series of small towns in the Great Falls vicinity.

The title of the film comes from the term "slaughter rule", sometimes also called "mercy rule", where an athletic competition is prematurely ended when one team is ahead of the other by a certain number of points prior to game's end, so as to avoid the losing team being further humiliated by the winning team. An example is the 45-point rule used in six-man football competition in Texas.