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We Are Marshall

It’s hard not to feel something for the people of Huntington, WV, and Marshall University, as well as the friends and families who lost someone in the horrible November 1970 plane crash that took the life of 75 football players, coaches, flight crew, and fans as the Marshall Thundering Herd flew home after a loss to East Carolina University.  That’s why We Are Marshall, based on that tragedy, is a movie that will appeal to your emotions, make you root for the underdog, and celebrate success, even if the film is just average.

David Strathairn stars as President Donald Dedmon – the Marshall University president when the horrible tragedy occurs.  Faced with a campus and town in mourning, the Board of Governors and Dedmon are ready to shut down the football program temporarily, when Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie), a varsity co-captain who did not travel with the team due to an injury, rallies supporters to show Dedmon the people’s need to move forward and continue to play football as a way of honoring those who met with such a tragic end. He is successful, so Dedmon turns to the only person who wants the job of rebuilding the football program from scratch, Coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey).

Will Lengyel be able to field a competitive team?  Will the town be able to overcome their grief to support the team the same way they did before the crash?

We Are Marshall is another in the long line of inspirational sports movies we have seen this year, but it accomplishes its goals more because of the story than the actual filmmaking itself.  This is not to say director McG and writer Jamie Linden did a horrible job.  Quite to the contrary, I was shocked to find out McG (the man who brought us the Charlie’s Angels movies, which have nothing to do with subtlety and emotion) was the same guy who was able to capture the most tender and raw moments of sadness we see in We Are Marshall in such an effective and moving way, while Linden provides dialogue that feels real, even if it lapses into speechifying and trying to be important and weighty.  It’s just that We Are Marshall falls into formula and needs the actors to save it from time to time.

McG has the unenviable task of making a movie in reverse.  We start with the big game.  We move on to the big tragedy.  Then, McG has to take us through the healing and rebuilding that often is just a coda or epilogue to most movies, so you have to give him credit for making We Are Marshall as compelling as it is. 

However, I feel like we have seen the training camp montage, the big game, and the coming-together-like-a-team montage a few too many times this year.  I guess that’s not McG’s fault (especially since I said those were my favorite portions of Rocky Balboa), but I wish he could have done something more visually interesting with it all.  However, he will impress you with the way he brings forth Linden’s themes of grieving, trying to move forward with life and the guilt of those who could have been on the flight.  These are the key elements to We Are Marshall, and the moments the actors make the most of throughout the film. 

Strathairn, Mackie and Matthew Fox make We Are Marshall a movie worth seeing on the big screen.  While other actors do a fine job, including Kate Mara as the cheerleader, Annie, who loses her fiancée in the crash, and Ian McShane as the father of the same young man, We Are Marshall is more about the team moving forward and rebuilding than it is about the grieving families.  Strathairn is perfect as the tweedy, nervous, nerdy, goodhearted president who desperately wants to do the right thing for the university, while Mackie is just as good as the heartbroken teammate who feels it is his duty as co-captain to honor the memory of his team the best he can.  However, it’s Fox who truly stands out from everyone else.

Fox, who is supposed to be playing second fiddle to McConaughey, actually upstages the bigger star by doing everything right that the Texan does wrong.  As coach and recruiter Red Dawson, one of the few who doesn’t get on the plane, Fox wonderfully and painfully represents the guilt those who should have been on the plane feel when the tragedy occurs.  Without ever really saying it, his performance is full of his character trying to figure out why it wasn’t him, and what he’s supposed to do now that everything he loved is gone.  Even worse, he was the guy who convinced many of those players to join the team. Dawson’s deeply haunted by these events, and Fox makes the audience feel it without overdoing it.  On the flip side, McConaughey isn’t terrible as Coach Lengyel, but for every scene where he captures your attention and delivers the most stirring of dialogue, he also has other moments where he is too wacky and goofy, which hurt the movie at some times when it is supposed to be somber (sounding and acting like Yosemite Sam doesn't always work).     

Some sub-plots never get fully worked out, and others probably don’t even need to be in here, but We Are Marshall is a good movie. 

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