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Genre
Director
Country
Cast
Matthew McConaughey, Matthew Fox, Anthony Mackie, Arlen Escarpeta, David Strathairn, Ian McShane, Kate Mara, January Jones, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Brian Geraghty, Tommy Cresswell, Christian Kanupke, Nina Jones, Mike Pniewski, Robert Patrick
Storyline
When the most of the football team and coaches of Marshall University die in a plane crash, the team's new coach (Matthew McConaughey) and his surviving players try to keep the football program alive.
Opinion
I'm back with another McConaughey movie, that also features Matthew Fox, the other Matthew I can't stand. Luckily, the sacrifice was quite worthy.
Run to the end zone by McConaughey, We Are Marshall is tedious, but rises from the ashes thank to the message it delivers.
My expectations for this film were kind of low. Even though I knew it is based on a true story, I was expecting the typical stereotyped feel good sport film. I was wrong.
The plot isn't much different from any other sport films out there, and so would seem to be the outcome. The football does play an important role in the story, but, as I mentioned before, there's a message delivered, and it redeems the film from the sport genre. The whole point of the film is dealing with loss, and getting back to the daily business of life, and it uses football to deliver a message of hope, showing how winning just one game provided enough hope to set an entire town on the path of recovery.
Some people have been complaining about the ending, saying that it killed the climax. So, should have the film ended after winning the game against Xavier? No way, unless you don't want just another sport film.
Having said that, the big fail is McG's direction. He doesn't manage to fully capture the emotions in Huntington at that time, and the result is a sad film with no real feeling.
Matthew McConaughey really did a wonderful job portraying coach Jack Lengyel, and basically carried the whole film. Looking lost and in pain, Matthew Fox also did a good job as the assistant coach. Anthony Mackie wonderfully portrayed Nate and caught his spirit of leadership.
This felt totally like a typical sports movie, to me. The sad part is that it should be so much more because of how devastating a story it really is. Still, when I watched it, I didn't feel much at all. You touched on the reason why. McG did such a paint-by-numbers job on this that instead of being a gut-wrenching experience, it's thoroughly...meh.
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