Review of McFarland, USA (2015) by Robbie M — 22 Feb 2015

You know what, I want Kevin Costner as a sports coach. We would never lose! My review of McFarland USA right now.

Based on a true story, McFarland USA is directed by Niki Caro and stars Kevin Costner as Jim White, a football coach who is fired due to his bad temper. He moves with his family to McFarland, a latino school, to work as a football coach. But he discovers that they can run, very fast and he puts together a cross country team with seven members to help them achieve greatness and win the state championship.

Though predictable and cliched, McFarland USA is a heartfelt and inspiring sports drama with well fleshed out characters and helmed with a great, solid performance from Kevin Costner.

At this point, Kevin Costner has proved he is the king of sports movies. He's been in so many of them from baseball, golf, football and now cross country and he kills it once more. Even though we've seen him play this type of character before, there is no denying that he's great in these type of roles and gives a lot of heart to the movie. Kevin Costner is an actor who I think has become a stronger actor the more he's aged. His character is well developed to where I cared about him greatly and I wanted him to succeed.

However, I have to give much credit to the kids in the movie. They all were fantastic! All of them were given equal screen time and all of them had their moments to shine. I was surprised on how much they were fleshed out and by the end of the movie I knew everyone of them and I cared for every single one of them. Carlos Pratts is very good in this movie playing Thomas Valles and his interacts with Kevin Costner was very well done. Also Ramiro Rodriguez playing the underdog of the team, Danny Diaz, I was rooting for him everytime he was on screentime and I nearly cheered for him on more than one occasion.

What I thought was gonna be hard to do is making cross country an interesting subject to watch and they do it very well. I'm not a sports guy, most of you know that but I was caught by surprise by how much I was into it. Some of the races were very suspenseful and that's due to the script and careful direction. Because I cared about all of the characters, I wanted them all to win and they did that very well. However, the movie really isn't about the races.

I'm gonna compare this movie to The Fighter. I'm saying saying this is a better movie than The Fighter, that is clearly the better movie. The reason I'm comparing them is that The Fighter was a movie about family and redemption while having the boxing element in there, it's the same way here. For the majority, it's all about the relationship between the characters and their families. We get a great look at their way of culture (which was great learning about). Seeing Kevin Costner's family having to adapt and learn the new culture was great and often entertaining to watch as well.

But because it is a Disney sports drama, it is a predictable movie. I could have told you where the movie was going from the start, it has all the cliches of a regular sports movie. It wasn't anything original or anything groundbreaking. And there was one scene in the third act I that was forced, not spoiling anything but an event happens and I thought it was useless. They wanted to create more drama and make the runtime longer than it needed to be (129 minute movie, ten minutes off would have been better).

Overall, I really liked McFarland USA. I had a really good time watching this movie. Well fleshed out characters, great work from Kevin Costner and a heartwarming story, this is a movie that I suggest seeing.

I'm give McFarland USA a B+.