WE ARE MARSHALL Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Warner Bros
Grade: C+
Directed by: McG
Written By: Jamie Linden, story by Lamie Linden
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, David Strathairn, Ian McShane,
Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie
Screened at: Warner, NYC, 12/5/06
Opens: December 22, 2006 You can't fault the makers of this film for wanting to honor those members of a college football team and others who went down in a tragic plane crash on November 14, 1970. The Marshall University squad, including staff, some alumni and friends were flying back to the school's town, Huntington, West Virginia, having played against East Carolina college. Seventy-five were killed, as the plane hit the Appalachians just a quarter-mile from the runway. Bodies were burned beyond identification. However, the requirements of solid movie-making go beyond having your heart on your sleeve, even if the story makes people in the audience take out their Kleenex. Aside from the fact that this is based on a true event, "We are Marshall" is yet another addition to the sports genre with the usual trajectory: get your team together, lose a few, win a big one in the final seconds. The acting by Matthew MacConaughey as Coach Jack Lengyel, a fellow recruited by the college president himself, who drove two hundred miles to interview the man, is as conventional as you can get. McG's direction–wives and girlfriends and cheerleaders in the stands cheering each positive play, looking glum at every setback; coach giving the boys hell in the locker room; team players fighting among themselves--it's all by the book. By now we get the idea that if you live in a small town framed by a college, you don't follow the New York Giants or the Boston Celtics, but you watch every play by your own home team and talk about it throughout the next day. The hook in this story centers on the question: what do you do when almost your entire varsity team is lost, the town mourning? Do you respect their memory by suspending the program for a couple of years at least, or do you take the big risk of recruiting an almost entirely new, freshmen squad, by having your coaches go out into various areas to promise the high school seniors and their families that you will give them lots of playing time? Though the school president, Dr. Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn), looked for the safe way out, he hired the one prospective coach on his list who was not an alumnus, and the coach, in turn, convinced the president to get a waiver from the usually rigid NCAA–which rarely if ever allowed freshmen to play varsity ball. Supporting players went through the expected motions. Nate Ruffin, played by the 27-year-old Anthony Mackie and thereby looking more like an assistant coach himself than a college student, did the injured shoulder bit. Ian McShane's Paul Griffin served as the bereaved dad who lost a son, convincing his boy's fiancé, Annie (Kate Mara), to keep the engagement ring on her finger rather than turn it over to him. One of the departed coaches had stated that winning is everything, and that's what Jack Lengyel believed for a while.
He then came around to the idea that not winning, not even turning up for a game, are the most important things. Keeping a program running is number one. You wouldn't know it from the way he and the team and the folks in the stands cheered when they smelled victory, and would have been crushed by a defeat. "We are Marshall," which gets its name from the college cheer, is sentimental to a fault. Some will find it moving. With due respect to the actual tragic background, McG's film does not rivet attention. Rated PG. 128 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
