Invincible

I am not afraid to admit I am a sucker for a good, underdog overcoming odds, sports movie. I rank Rudy among my favorite movies and it reduces me to tears every time I see it. Of course, for every Rudy we get a movie like Hardball. Recently we have had a few basketball themed movies of this ilk like Coach Carter and Glory Road but now it is time for a good old fashioned hard hitting football movie. Mark Wahlberg stars as a hometown boy who gets invited to try our for the NFL franchise Philadelphia Eagles even though he is 30 years old and never played college ball. As fomulaic as is, it is also a very well done movie.


Wahlberg puts aside the cocky characters he has carved out lately and harkens back to his boogie nights attitude of a quiet guy with a tremendous talent. The movie moves at a pretty good pace and even in those typical heart string tugging heart to hearts with he and his friends or dad, you never feel manipulated. Greg Kinnear takes the role of the Coach willing to take a chance on Wahlberg and never falls into that possibly mundane role of monologue spewing bore. He manages to find a soul inside of the character he is playing and that becomes very evident during the first game they show and Wahlberg's character freezes at the most inopportune time.


Elizabeth Banks of 40 yr old virgin fame rounds out the cast as the too perfect to be true girl next door. She likes hanging out with the guys, loves sports and knows sports. She lights up the screen when she smiles but ultimately she is scenery here. She does provide a few good laughs for us sports fans who understand how much Eagle and Giant fans do not get along. The rest of the cast of no names do a great job of filling out the roles of Marky-Marks hometown friends. 2 of which support him the whole time and the other who think he will leave them all behind.


In order to fully understand the movie you have to understand what sports can mean to people and if you can't do that I would skip it. The only real flaw in this movie is the direction during the football sections. The director seems hell-bent on getting as many slow motion shots as humanly possible in every frame of actual football. During the climax it gets especially nauseating. I do like that after you see the Disney version of the famous play, they show you the real play during the credits. The movie makers obviously took a bit of poetic license with the climax but ultimately stayed faithful to the life lived and the city saved.