Review of Murderball (2005) by Shawne ~ — 04 Aug 2006

A slamming, hard-hitting documentary featuring protagonists as inspiring as they are spiky, real and downright off-putting at times, [b]Murderball[/b] is a fascinating look at not just a thrilling but woefully neglected specialty sport (wheelchair rugby) but also some of the men who - although they all can't walk - have dominated the field through the sheer force of their will and personality alone. It's a film packed with some truly amazing, revealing footage (some so juicy it's a wonder directors Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro managed to clap their camera lenses on those moments) as it takes an unflinching look into the lives and motivations of a group of guys who effectively died the day they became confined to a wheelchair but found new reasons to fight again.

Although we're introduced to a host of players making up Team USA for the 2004 Paralympics in Athens, the two stars of this enterprise are without a doubt Mark Zupan, the blonde, bearded super-jock with murder in his eyes featured so memorably on the poster; and Joe Soares, tenacious US murderball superstar turned disgruntled coach from hell for Team Canada. We learn more about the tragic accident that left Zupan crippled for life - he was flung out of a van driven by his drunk buddy Christopher Igoe into a canal and had to hang on for dear life for hours before he was rescued - and watch him reach out as a spokesman for the sport he has quickly come to embody. We're also given some very telling insights into the life of Soares, a man who has defined his life by murderball - the previous moniker for the sport that has since been retired for the more descriptive 'quadriplegic rugby' - to the extent that it becomes his life's goal to beat the team he used to lead to glory by any means possible... even if it means effectively defecting to Canada.

Ostensibly structured around the various bruising match-ups between the US and Canada teams, as they struggle to beat each other even in the smallest of playoffs or qualifying rounds, [b]Murderball[/b] is actually far less about the sport than it is about the men who play it. Aside from a few memorable clashes at the outset focusing on the grinding metal smackdowns that characterise much of each game, the actual sport fades quickly into the background. For all the build-up that goes into leading the audience towards the final showdown in Athens, it's more than a little anti-climactic when the denouement is played out in slow-motion and set to a tinkling, mid-tempo tune that doesn't half reflect the brutality and bone-crushing that actually gives murderball its original name. If you wanted to see a lot of action when you decided to check out this documentary, you [i]will[/i] be sorely disappointed, and in a way, it is a flaw in the film that the directors never quite seem to decide how much weight to give the competitive aspect of their story. This is especially glaring when the film hits Athens, and no emphasis has been given to any other team but the US and Canada. Zipping through the competition with frustrating brevity, the film's emotional ballast comes from who wins that final US-Canada battle... but doesn't provide much of a balanced view of the actual sporting scene, since we never see the second-placed team that slots its way between the two countries on which we're artificially asked to concentrate.

But what [b]Murderball[/b] forsakes in terms of sporting adrenaline, it more than makes up for in its incisive character studies. Each of these human beings is presented just for what they are - not icons of perfection or martyrs, but as flawed, vain, rude and for all that, human as the rest of us. Zupan, for instance, is at once an inspiration to the newly disabled Keith Cavill, and a self-admitted bastard to Christopher especially in the years immediately following his accident. Soares is an even more pertinent example, and it's with his life that we get some of the more intriguing footage featured in this film. We see how it is possible for a man who cannot walk to treat his precocious son like a lesser being for not wanting to participate in sports. He is a belligerent, almost malignant presence, both on the court and in his house (he even spends his anniversary dinner with his wife bitching about how he really wants Team Canada to whup Team USA's ass). When Soares suffers a heart attack (and amazingly, the cameras are right in the operating theatre with him!), you would expect him to get a new lease on life and become a new, better human being. He does, to some extent, fulfil the cliche - but Soares also remains a tough old bastard who refuses to crack and still treats his erstwhile countrymen with a disdain bred of long years of feeling slighted and unappreciated.

And if all this wasn't enough, the documentary also serves as an enlightening, powerful look at the quadriplegic condition, be it through (intentionally) humourous snippets of an awkward, aged informational sex video, or just the capturing of some of the day-to-day ways in which these men deal with the simplest things like opening a card or pouring water. Through it all, and despite an uneven tone brought about by the directors' inability to decide whether to focus on either the sport or its practitioners, [b]Murderball [/b]manages to be that rare film - simultaneously inspiring and sobering - as we witness the heights man can scale even without the ability to walk, but are also confronted with the simple realities that we all take for granted but which become immeasurably more difficult for Zupan, Soares and any one of the incredibly vital, active men on their teams. Having gotten to know both these men, it's a relief that we're also given a sweet coda that plays over the end credits that provides a fitting answer to where we will leave these men on their life journeys... a sense of closure, as it were, for a couple of guys whose lives have proved fascinating, inspiring, frustrating viewing.