Everyone's heard the old saying that athletes don't just compete against others in their chosen sport, they also compete against themselves in terms of doing the best they can and trying to better that every time they step onto the field, court, diamond of other related playing surface.
Some, however, have another competitor they must face, and those are sports specters from the past. For instance, when Steve Young took over as quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, he not only faced his immediate opponents on the other side of the field, but also the legend of Joe Montana before him. Sports lore is filled with such unfair comparisons, but that gets even trickier when the fans are also your neighbors and friends.
While that doesn't happen to any great degree in professional sports, it does in small college towns like Huntington, West Virginia. That's home to Marshall University whose athletic teams are known as the Thundering Herd. It's pretty much like any other small institution of higher learning. That is, except for an event back in 1970 that forever changed the college and the townsfolk who supported it.
On November 14, the plane carrying most of the football team, coaching staff, and various boosters crashed in the mountains just before landing, killing all 75 souls onboard. Such an event obviously wiped out that program, but it also threatened to do permanent damage to the town's collective psyche, being that much of it was so closely tied into the team's successes and failures on the field that a common rallying cry was "We are Marshall."
Considering all of the built-in emotional and dramatic conflict, not to mention the true life story angle, it's surprising it's taken Hollywood so long to tell this tale. But now it has in the aptly named "We Are Marshall," a part true, part fictionalized look at the aftermath of the tragic event.
The film -- penned by Jamie Linden and directed by McG (of "Charlie's Angels" faith or notoriety) -- starts on that tragic day as the town is transfixed, via the radio broadcast, by the team's losing effort. After one coach trades places with another, the boyfriend says goodbye to the girlfriend, and another calls back to the school to have the beer ready, the plane lifts off.
It never makes it home, with the director thankfully sparing us the recreation of the actual crash (a flash of light, a quick jolt, and a sudden black picture does the job), but we do see the burning aftermath as well as the reactions of fathers, girlfriends, neighbors and more.
Thus, the stage is set for the emotionally laden drama that's to follow, as some want the program forever shuttered out of respect for the dead, while others want to rebuild from the ashes. The filmmakers, however, don't allow too much sentiment to get in the way as this is, after all, an uplifting sports flick.
Accordingly, grief and the exploration of thematic elements regarding what's the right thing to do in such a situation are pretty much benched (although some moments feel heartfelt and true) in favor of the standard football flick playbook. That is, a new coach is brought in and doesn't really fit in as he assembles his staff and team, and then has the gall to lose their first game despite his innovative leadership. He then huddles everyone together, goes through a number of training montages, and uses various motivational speeches to inspire the team to victory both on and off the field.
It's a game plan we've seen countless times before, and thus it's not too hard to predict each and every play the cast and crew are going to throw up onto the screen. You might ask, but does it work? Sure, but it and Matthew McConaughey's portrayal of the outsider coach are constantly bedeviled by the same specter that haunted Steve Young in his early days.
And that's any number of other films and the performances within that have preceded this one. Yet, while Young and others before and after him have had many games and seasons to prove their worth, films like this only have one chance (especially since they're unlikely -- by their very nature -- to generate sequels). Although this one doesn't necessarily fumble itself to defeat, it doesn't score enough to guarantee a winning season.
Beyond the way McG and the rest of his coaching staff have put the effort together, much of the problem stems from the quarterback's performance. That, of course, is referring to McConaughey as the coach. I have no idea whether any of it's historically accurate, but the character's determined but loosey-goosey persona feels at odds with the rest of the film, almost as if the character were traded in from another pic. I get what the actor is trying to do with the part, and while he oozes onscreen charisma, the character just doesn't feel right for the role and picture.
Performances by Matthew Fox and David Straithairn as a grief-stricken coach (who traded his seat on the plane at the last minute) and the confused college president, on the other hand, do pretty much work. Less successful are other survivor characters embodied by Ian McShane and Kate Mara as a father who lost his son and the boy's girlfriend) who don't get enough time or material to do much more than skim the surface of what's obviously incredible grief.
But who wants to see or experience that when there's football to be coached and played? That seems to be the approach the filmmakers have taken with this tale that obviously deserves better than the standard sports drama game plan. Not horrible, but clearly not as engaging as one might expect considering the real-life subject matter, "We Are Marshall" clearly knows how to the play the game. Yet, it doesn't stand out from a myriad of predecessors who've told countless variations of the same sort of tale. The film rates as a 5.5 out of 10.
![[Screen It]](/images/underground_header.jpg)