Posted: 12/27/2006

We Are Marshall

(2006)

by Hank Yuloff

With apologies to Sean Astin and his portrayal of Rudy Ruettiger, I must say that he his movie about an underdog making the Notre Dame football team has been replaced as the all-time tear-jerker football movie (yeah, that includes Bang the Drum Slowly—give me a break).

My wife didn’t attend the showing of We Are Marshall, and I was glad because I didn’t want her to see me cry at a movie about football. And keep crying. Several times crying. Sheesh… Hand me a tissue.

Director McG (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) did such an effective job at making this film that within 10 minutes of the beginning of the film, you are reaching for the napkin you thought you would only need to get the salt from the popcorn off your fingers. It is the true story of the 1970 Marshall University football team, whose plane crashed on November 14, 1970. They were on their way home from the final game of the season in East Carolina. Seventy-five people, including players, coaches and major boosters, were killed. The town and university are so intermingled that on days when the Thundering Herd has a home game, most everyone is in or around the stadium. The effect on the small town of Huntington, West Virginia, and how they dealt with the tragedy is so palpable that it weighs upon the theater like a thick fog.

There were many who felt that the University should not rebuild its program, but for the same reasons of honoring the memory of those killed, they should marshal themselves and move on. The pain of memory has a strong effect on everyone and the developing of a new program covers the bulk of the film.

Matthew McConaughey (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) is the new Head Coach—Jack Lengyel. If this was a fictional character, I would have felt he was way too odd to be a believable football coach. But when the president of the university goes through a list of 30 names before he finds Lengyel, you begin to see that it was very possible that finding the right person for this job could have been impossible. McConaughey has enough Harold Hill in him to make this work. With no previous connections to Marshall, he was asked why he even wanted the job. His only answer was to point at his kids, think of what he would feel like if they were suddenly gone, and think “Maybe I can help.” Pass me the tissues.

On the subject of that university president, David Strathairn is Oscar-worthy. After his work in Good Night, and Good Luck, Twisted and The Notorious Bettie Page, Strathairn has become one of my favorite actors. He is scheduled to appear in nine films in the next two years, and has been in seven in the last two. Also incredible is Anthony Mackie, who plays Nate Ruffin. Ruffin missed the game because of a shoulder injury and was one of just four players who did not perish in the crash. Mackie was in Million Dollar Baby and Freedomland. Look for him to play Jesse Owens in 2008.

We Are Marshall shows that sometimes you win just by showing up. Look for it to show up on my Top 10 of the year.

Hank Yuloff is a film critic living in Los Angeles.

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