Review of Murderball (2005) by Walter M — 13 Aug 2005

[font=Century Gothic]"Murderball" is a documentary about wheelchair rugby which begins at the 2002 World Championships in Sweden and leads up to the 2004 Paralympics which are held in Athens, following the Olympics. Wheelchair rugby is a rough and tumble sport or as one player calls it - "kill the guy with the ball." (Thus illustrating perfectly that the handicapped are not all as delicate as we would think and that they have to work out their agressiveness, too.) The movie focuses on the American team(especially Mark Zupan, who is rather charismatic) training for the Paralympics. At the same time, Joe Soares is coaching and training Team Canada. He used to be a great player with Team America but was turned down for a spot one year and went to coach Team Canada.(Soares reminds me of a bit of Robert Duvall in "The Great Santini.") It does resemble the storylines of any number of sports movies from Hollywood except I think they would have used Russia, China or Iran instead of Canada. [/font].

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[font=Century Gothic]"Murderball" educated me quite a deal on the nature of being of quadriplegic; in that it is much more complex than I thought at first. It is not just a matter of being paralyzed; there are degrees of paralysis, too. The section on sex was most illuminating. Basically, I thought this documentary was very entertaining and touching but not in a maudlin "disease of the week" way. But it is still not as good as the great documentary "When Billy Broke His Head...And Other Tales of Wonder." [/font].

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