Publication Date: 05-16-2026

The Senior (2025) review

Dir. Rod Lurie

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Only fitting that on Mother’s Day, I elected to watch The Senior; the Blu-ray copy I had checked out from the library had been staring at me for nearly two weeks. My mother was a huge fan of Michael Chiklis. He was her celebrity crush, and she never missed an episode of The Shield. I was a dutiful son and got her DVD sets of every season of the show for Christmas as they released. Close friends and faithful readers know I talk about my mother a lot, for I miss her dearly, and will until the day I die. But watching something like The Senior on Mother’s Day of all days made me feel a kinship with her yet again.

I think mom would’ve liked the movie — for Chiklis, most importantly, retains his blue-collar handsomeness and rugged smile — but I think she would’ve especially enjoyed it because it’s a good story, well-told, with strong performances and more than a couple moving scenes.

Structured as a familiar underdog sports story, and thus functioning as an amiable crowd-pleaser, The Senior tells the real-life fairytale story of Mike Flynt (Chiklis), who rejoined his former college football team at the age of 59, becoming one of the oldest players in NCAA history. You see, back in 1970, Flynt (played by Shawn Patrick Clifford) was a hot-headed middle linebacker and captain of the Sul Ross State Lobos in West Texas. His natural response to conflict is throwing hands, and after several bouts of fisticuffs, a brawl with a freshman teammate proves to be the coup de grâce. Mike is expelled, and it’s a regret that lingers deep into middle age.

37 years later, at his high school reunion, his body now chiseled from years spent on a construction site, Mike is encouraged by his peers to give football another shot. Despite not consulting his wife, Eileen (Mary Stuart Masterson), Mike makes the move, at 59-years-old, to walk-on in an attempt to make the current Lobos roster. This tall order still proves to be more manageable than attempting to have a heart-to-heart with his son, Micah (Brandon Flynn), a college professor, who has grown distant from his dad over the years; Micah could never be half the jock Mike envisioned.

Lobos head coach Sam Weston (Rob Corddry) struggles with how to manage a geriatric member of his squad. While Mike still hits like a mule kicks on the defensive line, coach doesn’t want to be responsible for the man suffering a debilitating spinal cord injury or something of that ilk. And thus, when the Lobos’ season kicks off, Mike is uniform, but on-ice on the sidelines, (im)patiently waiting for his moment. During his time on the team, Mike befriends wide receiver Jamal Johnson (Terayle Hill), and the camaraderie between the two serves as the best interpersonal work Robert Eisele’s script has to offer.

Mike becomes known as “Fred Flintstone” and “Pops” amongst his younger teammates, but make no mistake: the veteran of the game still puts them on to “The Rubberband Man” as a hype song. Chiklis’ performance is credibly prickly and standoffish, which makes the scenes between him and his wife and son all the more believable. As far as movies proving that men would, at on the knife’s edge of 60, rather suit up and play linebacker than go to therapy are concerned, you could do far worse than The Senior just based on an human intrigue level. Unconventional is it that this is a sports movie where the main character spends most of the time on the sidelines, watching his team either squeak-by with a win or get mollywhopped at the hands of stiff, D-III competition, which heightens the suspense of the entire production.

If you’re like my mom and want to watch The Senior for Michael Chiklis alone, you won’t be disappointed. Despite playing a linebacker, he puts the entire movie on his shoulders like a grizzled quarterback. If you want to watch it in hopes of seeing a compelling sports movie, you’re in luck — and unlike most Angel movies, this one doesn’t try to persuade you to buy tickets for the masses during the end credits.

Starring: Michael Chiklis, Mary Stuart Masterston, Brandon Flynn, James Badge Dale, Terayle Hill, and Rob Corddry. Directed by: Rod Lurie.