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PLOT: A plane crash in 1970 claimed the lives of most of the Marshall University football team. This is a film, based on true events, about how the school (and the whole town) survived the loss and eventually recovered hope.
We didn't much like We Are Marshall, but then, films that feature sport as a metaphor for life rarely interest us. For your sake, gentle reader, we got a second opinion by forcing someone who loves such films to watch this one.
He didn't much like it either.
We Are Marshall opens in theatres today. It is an over-long story about people pulling together to recover from a terrible tragedy. The film is based on real events of 1970, when a small plane crashed near Huntington, West Virginia, killing most of the Marshall University football team, several coaches and a handful of fans.
It's impossible to imagine the impact of such a tragedy on those left behind. According to Huntington locals, the passage of time has never really softened the blow.
We Are Marshall attempts to capture the crisis and the long, slow road to recovery for those left to cope with the loss. Unfortunately, the emphasis in the storytelling is on football, not on people, and that's the basic flaw.
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Matthew Fox plays Red Dawson, the assistant coach who chose to drive home at the last minute on the fateful night of the crash. The movie investigates his survivor's guilt.
Then there's Anthony Mackie in the role of Nate Ruffin, a ballplayer who likewise missed the flight because of an injury.
Matthew McConaughey turns up as Jack Lengyel, an outsider who took the coaching job at Marshall that nobody else wanted. When the football program was almost cancelled, Lengyel was the glue that put the team and the town back together.
The cast includes David Strathairn as the university president, Ian McShane as a heartbroken father and Kate Mara as a heartbroken cheerleader. Everyone in the film is based on a real person or persons.
The problem is, you won't care. We Are Marshall is overwrought and manipulative, and the characters are barely two-dimensional. We can accept football as a metaphor for picking yourself up and dusting yourself off and finding the courage to get on with life, but only if we've come to care about the people playing the game.
That never happens, thanks to a script you might describe as shallow and self-indulgent. This is some self-important filmmaking -- cue the violins, to be sure -- and the end result is stale.
BOTTOM LINE: Bound to be a must-see proposition for the people of Huntington, whose personal knowledge of the events will help them fill in the blanks of characterization. All others beware.
(This film is rated PG)