We are Marshall

Being a sports fan and knowing a bit about this story, I was very excited at the prospect of this movie. That was until I saw who was directing because McG would have been my first choice to direct something that should have heart. If you don't know who he is allow me to give you a little list of his credits- Charlie's Angels 1 and 2 a sublime concert DVD as well as a Cypress hill DVD concert. He is also the executive producer of guilty pleasure shows like The OC, Fast lane and the soon to be produced "The Pussycat Dolls." The Marshall University tragedy is worlds away from Cameron Diaz dancing around in her underwear or motorcycles exploding, so I was a bit worried how exhaustingly edited the football cuts would be. However, McG does manage to tone down the the flashy no heart style but unfortunately he allows the overly sappy music to rampant over this film.


For those unaware of the story in 1970 an airplane carrying an entire college football team, parents and coaches crashed and everyone was killed. The president of the school and the board members had decided to shut down the football program for a little while in an effort to regroup but one member of the football team who had stayed behind due to a shoulder injury rallied the students together to show the school board that they needed a football team. Enter Matthew McConaughey as a cheery, analogy speaking football coach. Matthew has proven to be both an amazing actor (A Time to kill and Amistad) . a horrible actor (Sahara and Two for the money) and a pointless actor (Failure to Launch and The Wedding Planner) but here he falls somewhere in the middle. In scenes of light hearted banter or intense football screaming he is flawless, but he falls short in a lot of the sympathetic moments and trips over his drawl often in the final big speech before the big game. Also, he talks out of the side of his mouth for the entire film and it gets very annoying very quickly. The real star to me in this movie is Anthonie Mackie. Most people won't know who he is but he has had bit supporting roles in movies like 8 mile and million dollar baby, but here is the one actor who rises above a cliche riddled script and finds the perfect mix of guilt, anger and pride to his performance. I don't have much to say about Matthew Fox because until the end he didn't really do much for me.


As an inspirational sports movie, this falls below the upper echelon ones but above the bad ones. The story is pretty remarkable and McG along with his writers seemed to find the right side stories to focus on. We have the girlfriend of a lost player as well as the father of her boyfriend. We get a little glimpse into a kid whose father was killed but McG never pulls too much focus away from the main story at hand. The football games themselves are interestingly shot and edited. In fact, there isn't much to them which leads me to believe McG had no clue how to do football well. Perhaps that was for the best because it gave us a chance ot focus on the characters. Overall the script is bad and the music is worse, but it is hard for me to hate such a well intentioned movie.