Review of We Are Marshall (2006) by Markb. — 09 Mar 2007

Learning that McG, the dude who brought you the glitzy and trashy Charlie's Angels and the glitzier and trashier Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle has been entrusted with this factual account of how the town of Huntington WV coped with and triumphed in the aftermath of a plane crash that wiped out most of their beloved Marshall College football team is like finding out that your father's funeral is going to be filmed by the guy who does the Girls Gone Wild videos.

Surprisingly, McG does a mostly respectable, inoffensive job with the material (and this goes beyond his avoidance of all but a minimum of gratuitous cheerleader shots); his treatment is watchable, occasionally moving, and wonderfully acted by its two male leads.

Matthew McConaughey, as Coach Jack Lengyel, who brings himself in to restore the team's and town's morale if not their statistics, rebounds nicely from Failure to Launch with a warm, charismatic portrayal that provides this potentially unbearable material with many tasteful and extremely welcome comic touches.

(Gotta love the fact that he treats us to helpful quotes that aren't from Sports Illustrated or The Sporting News, but from...well, I won't spoil it for you.) David Straithairn's less flashy depiction of University President Donald Dedmon certainly isn't a "career role" the way that his unforgettable Edward R.

Murrow was in Good Night, and Good Luck, but Straithairn's willingness to play the yin to McConaughey's scene-stealing yang reflects well on the actor's total integrity, lack of ego, and willingness to live up to the oft-quoted philosophy of "loving art in yourself, not yourself in art"; Straithairn once again proves himself a character actor of the highest order.

The subplot involving a town waitress who was engaged to one of the ill-fated players is touching, whether or not it actually happened, and there's certainly something to be said for any movie that attempts to explore (if not question outright) Vince Lombardi's noxious-if-taken-the-wrong-way sports-as-life philosophy of "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing".

Nevertheless, We Are Marshall ultimately fails to score because of a very basic structural fumble: the fatal plane crash occurs scant minutes into the film, and we never get to know any of the original Marshall team (except, briefly, the coach).

Beyond the obvious problem that, as far as air disaster movies go, this makes We Are Marshall look less like United 93 than the original Final Destination, it limits our ability to empathize or identify with the surviving townspeople's relationships with folks that are so obviously and schematically written as ciphers intentionally devoid of any identity other than as symbols.

I must regrettably agree to disagree with the brilliant Chad S., who thought that the movie's 99% focus on those left behind is what made it successful; for me, the Vera Petersen/ Maris Crane approach is highly unsatisfactory, and causes We Are Marshall, however well intentioned it obviously is, to fall short of being the tribute to the team, the school and the town that it so sincerely sets out to be.