Matthew McConaughey almost runs We Are Marshall to the end zone, but can't stop it from taking the easy, feel-good route in memorializing this historic event in American sports.
Matthew McConaughey almost runs We Are Marshall to the end zone, but can't stop it from taking the easy, feel-good route in memorializing this historic event in American sports.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
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A true story of tragedy, hope, and resilience comes to the screen in this sports drama. Huntington, WV, is home to Marshall University, a school where college football is a way of life. Huntington is also a town that learned to deal with tragedy in the fall of 1970 when Marshall's "Thundering Herd" boarded an airliner to return home after a football game in North Carolina. The jet crashed into a hill due to bad weather, and 75 members of Marshall's football squad and athletic staff died that
night. The accident dealt a crippling blow to the city of Huntington, as well as Marshall's faculty and student body, and university president Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) considered abandoning the school's football program. But instead Coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) was recruited from Ohio's College of Wooster to rebuild Marshall's football program. Lengyel was not naïve about the task ahead of him, and working beside Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), an assistant coach who narrowly missed the doomed flight and was one of the program's only survivors, he came to understand his job was not just to put a team on the field, but help a college and a community heal their wounds from the tragic accident. Together Lengyel and Dawson turned a handful of rookies and second-string players into a competitive team who in 1971 showed the world what they could do in a legendary game against Marshall's rivals, Xavier University. Produced with the cooperation of Marshall University and filmed in part on their campus, We Are Marshall also stars Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie, and January Jones. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Unlike a lot of sports movies, it doesn't end with a championship or a great upset over a powerhouse. The real victory on the Marshall campus was in fielding a team that honored and respected the legacy of the 1970 team.
This was undeniably a horrific event for the victims' families friends, colleagues as well as for the entire community. But the movie seems to almost exploit this tragedy so it can make audiences weep, and ultimately, cheer.
We Are Marshall (it's the rally cry of the team) doesn't always have a handle on the grief, but it does keep emotions close to the surface. That allows McConaughey to be the most refreshing, funny and believable he ever has been.
We Are Marshall is not a bad movie; it is a potentially nice, familiar movie unfortunately marred by the unspeakably awful performance of Matthew McConaughey.
The DVD provides a pair of featurettes, including a substantial one on how six legendary sports coaches (some famous and some less so) overcome adversity.
Bittersweet football flick less concerned with gridiron feats than with how members of a tight-knit community deal with their grief in the wake of a disaster.
...as sympathetic as audiences are to the situation, the movie itself seldom rises above the mediocre and the sentimental. (HD DVD and DVD Combo Edition)
What allows We Are Marshall to stand above many of the other 2006 sports movies is both the undeniable power of the story itself and the strong ensemble McG gathered to tell it.
As exciting and well staged as the on-field action is (finally, a football movie gives the field goal kicker the respect he's due!), I was more taken by what was happening off the field.
Moving and painful. While it is obviously loosely following the real events, even tha tis enought ot make you stand up and salute the town. Indeed We Are Marshall.
Movie based on a true story about a town called Huntingdon who lost their university football team and staff in a tragic plane accident. The president if the school wants to abandon the football programme but some students convince him not to. He employs football coach and assistant coach - two Matthews. Looks at hope
from tragedy. Good cast.
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