We Are Marshall Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)December 19th, 2006
WE ARE MARSHALL
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
WE ARE MARSHALL, by CHARLIE'S ANGELS and music video director McG, is a decidedly schmaltzy film based on a true story. In 1970, in what the film's marketing department calls the biggest disaster in sports history, the Marshall University football team and coaches perish in a plane crash at the end of the season. One coach and four players who weren't on the plane survive. This isn't much to put a team together with for the next year since the NCAA rules won't allow incoming freshmen to play. This causes the adults in the town to decide to give up, but the students want to go on -- somehow.
Set in the quintessential steel mill town of Huntington, West Virginia, the college needs someone to lead this almost non-existent football program. The only surviving coach, Red Dawson (Matthew Fox, the doctor on "Lost"), is way too broken up emotionally to lead the team.
With much trepidation but no other viable options, Marshall University President Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) reluctantly decides to accept the application of Jack Lengyel to lead the Thundering Herd, as the team is called. In easily the weirdest performance of his career, Matthew McConaughey hams it up for all he's worth as Coach Lengyel. His performance of a gutsy idiot who asks the impossible in the strangest ways imaginable is arguably off-the-scale bad. But as he chews up the scenery in some really cheesy outfits -- it is most definitely the early 70s -- McConaughey's off-putting work begins to become somehow charming, if you can keep from puking while watching him. It's a risky performance that's more likely to trash a career than jumpstart it, but, in the sugary context of this feel-good film for the holidays, it has its strange treats.
The movie takes great pains to get all of the costumes and the sets just right. From the little TV sets with oversaturated color to the big fins on the Caddys and the big sideburns and lapels on the guys, it is a movie that wallows in 70s tacky. It also has one of the cheapest airplane crashes in cinema history. On the plane with the team when it starts to go down, we see just a microsecond flash followed by a long cut to black.
Most of the story concerns Coach Lengyel's attempt to recruit and train a new squad. Like a movie that is saving its limited budget for the sports action, they save almost all of the football game footage for the obligatory big game that ends the movie. Don't leave early, as the epilogue, which occurs just before the ending credits roll, is fascinating, mainly for the explanations of what didn't happen -- well not at least for a long time.
WE ARE MARSHALL runs 2:06. It is rated PG for "emotional thematic material, a crash scene, and mild language" and would be acceptable for all ages.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, December 22, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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