We Are Marshall

Every couple months, Hollywood opens up their playbooks, and gives us a paint-by-numbers inspirational sports movie. This time, the entry is We Are Marshall, an overly calculated and ultimately disappointing telling of what should be a very moving story. The story is based on a tragedy that hit a small college football town in 1970, and how the people were eventually able to rise above it. The problem is, director McG (the Charlie's Angels films) doesn't dig deep enough into his own material. This makes the film curiously shallow and distant. We never get a true sense of the town or the football team rising above the tragedy, and doesn't that kind of defeat the entire purpose of the movie in the first place?

The small blue-collar town of Huntington, West Virginia literally grinds to a halt when their prized Marshall University Thundering Herd football team are tragically killed while flying home from a game. The plane transporting the team from North Carolina is struck by a bolt of lightning while flying through some unsteady weather. It crashes nearby their hometown (the plane was just beginning to land when it was hit), and the entire team, coaches, and supporters are killed instantly upon impact. The town of Huntington seems lost as to what they should do, and some are even suggesting that they cut the football team completely, which is a major blow to the small handful of surviving Varsity players who were fortunate enough not to be on that plane that evening, deciding to get home by other means. The students are eventually able to convince the school's board to carry on with football, but with no coach and no team, they literally have to start back at Square One if they even want a chance. Enter energetic and fast-talking coach Jack Lyngel (Matthew McConaughey), who applies for the job of head coach because he wants to help the people move on past the tragedy that has controlled their lives the past couple months. With his quick thinking and unorthodox ideas, he will rebuild the Marshall University Thundering Herd from the ground up.

We Are Marshall is a movie that starts out confident and sure, but slowly sinks into a murky puddle of its own cliches, music montages, and bare bones characterizations. The opening moments are when the film is at it's best, as one of the University students (Kate Mara) narrates and tells us about life in Huntington. We are then introduced to the Marshall football team, and the events leading up to their ill-fated flight. Once again, everything seems okay here. First-time screenwriter Jamie Linden introduces us to some of the key players and their relationships outside of the team, and wisely does not rely on ominous foreshadowing, even though we all know what's coming. The plane crashes, and the movie honestly and realistically depicts a once lively town that has now gone into a near-standstill as everybody tries to come to terms with what has happened. Yes, the scene where all the students stand outside the building and chant "we are Marshall" over and over in order to show their support for a new team is a bit sappy and much, but up to this point, I was pretty confident that the filmmakers knew what they were doing. But, as soon as new coach Jack Lyngel enters the picture and starts trying to get everyone back on their feet, the movie gets dragged kicking and screaming into mediocrity. Losing the confidence and nerve that it displayed during its opening 20 minutes, We Are Marshall fumbles from this point on and never quite recovers. That's because the character of Jack Lyngel is so quirky and bizarre that he almost seems to have walked in from another movie. The way Matthew McConaughey plays him, with his constant toothy grin and overly cute Southern accent and charm, he's more like an imitation of a person than an actual flesh and blood human being. He's a fast-talking, quick-witted good ol' boy from the South who always has something clever or funny to say, no matter what the situation, and McConaughey lays on these traits so thick that we're sick of him before his first scene is over. I have no idea what the real life Jack Lyngel is like, or if this is an accurate depiction of the man. If it is, I would have a hard time taking him seriously, just as I did in this movie.

It's not just Jack Lyngel, but apparently the entire town that is affected by this shift of tone. Once Jack starts urging everybody to move on beyond the past, the townspeople characters who seemed so promising during the film's first half hour or so are suddenly forgotten about, so the movie can concentrate more on McConaughey's obnoxious performance. The people of Huntington become mere afterthoughts, so we never quite truly identify with their pain. Heck, even the new football team that Jack and his assistant coaches work so hard to put together are all but forgotten for pretty much the entire movie. We get a music montage where the new players are recruited, another couple music montages where they go into training, they play their first game, and then they literally disappear for a long portion of the movie before it's time for the big game at the end. The fact that this is supposed to be a movie about a man trying to help a town move on by assembling a new football team, but there's actually very little football to speak of during the film's running time, is quite puzzling to me. Equally puzzling is how little time the movie spends on the grieving townspeople, since this would be the natural direction the movie would take if it wasn't going to concentrate heavily on football. The characters are too depressingly one-note and underdeveloped for us to care. It sets up a couple characters who have potential, but never does anything with them. A key example is the young student who also acts as the film's narrator. She's a former cheerleader who was in love with one of the players who died in the crash, and since then, spends her time working in a local diner and sulking. She comes and goes from the movie as she pleases, so she never truly resonates as a character. This is a shame, because the way Kate Mara plays this character, you can tell she could be a stand out in a screenplay that actually cared about her character, instead of haphazardly inserting her from time to time to remind us she's in the movie also.

The rest of the cast are merely a sea of faces that get lost in an underdeveloped screenplay that can't be bothered to give them any depth. All of the players on the team exist solely for music montage moments, and to stand around while Jack gives "stirring" speeches about moving on. The townspeople are sketchily developed, and many serve no point in the movie itself. A good example are Jack's wife and children, who are given barely any screen time whatsoever, and mainly exist for window dressing. The few characters who actually do manage to break out and leave an impression unfortunately do not leave a very big one, since their characters never quite get off the ground. For example, Matthew Fox (TV's Lost) portrays the assistant head coach, who is dealing with the guilt that he was supposed to be on the ill-fated flight, but changed his mind at the last minute, giving his seat to someone else. While working for Jack, he is conflicted by his feelings of wanting to move beyond the past, and feelings of remorse that he should have died along with the rest of the team. He's good during the scenes that actually explore this idea, but most of the time, he's forced to merely stand in the background and let Matthew McConaughey give his loopy performance. The few surviving players from the previous team are even more awkwardly handled, as only one of them gets to create anything even remotely resembling a character, while the rest are pretty much forgotten about for the rest of the film.
We Are Marshall is a movie that has the right idea, but is betrayed by its overly sloppy execution and obnoxious lead performance. While watching the movie, you're not thinking about what's going on up on the screen or about the real life situation. You keep on thinking of how a better movie would have handled the story, fleshed out the characters, and given us something to actually care about. When we get the closing narration, telling us what happened to most of the people and players in the later years, we feel nothing, because the movie has made no effort to inform us. The story that We Are Marshall tells deserves a very up close and personal approach. This movie looks at the action through a pair of binoculars from the cheap seats in the stand, while a really obnoxious guy sits next to you, cracking jokes, and won't shut up.

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