By Curt Schleier

Let’s be clear about this.  There are certain conventions to inspirational athletic films.  When the film goes to slow motion, the good guys score.  It doesn’t make a difference what sport it is, the downtrodden athletic masses will rise and overcome the oppressors.  Very slowly.

It is also important to note that when the slow motion begins towards the end of the film it will take a long time – enough to go the fridge and get a beer if one is so inclined. (I’d have suggested a glass of wine, but this is not a wine people movie.)

WE ARE MARSHALL is a film with slow motion.  It is formulaic, it has sappy moments.  But it is also joyous, heartwarming and, yes, inspirational.  There are a couple of things that raise it far above standard feel-good fare.  For one, there is the surprisingly sensitive direction of McG, more noted for CHARLIE’S ANGELS than filming scenes that offer emotional sustenance.  But there is also the subject matter.

On Nov. 14, 1970, a plane carrying the Marshall University football, its coaches and a group of team boosters crashed in the Appalachian Mountains on its way home from a football game in North Carolina.  It was, of course, a tragedy at the time.  However, in the years since then, since 9/11, sudden mass deaths, particularly of young people, have taken on a new resonance – at least for me.  It significantly heightens the film’s impact.

Huntington, W. Va., is a university town, and the football team was central to both the school and the surrounding community.  The plane crash devastated the community.  In addition to athletes and coaches, team boosters were aboard, as well. The leading lights of Huntington, including, doctors, lawyer s and local politicians were suddenly no longer there: children, parents, fiancés and sweethearts.

The film focuses on a few of those affected.  Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara) is a cheerleader engaged to one of the team’s stars.  Paul Griffen (Ian McShane) is the boy’s father and an influential member of the University board.  Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) is the University president, who doesn’t know anything or care about football.  Finally, Matthew Fox is particularly brilliant as Red Dawson, an assistant coach who, just before the return flight takes off, offers to take over a recruiting trip as a favor for another coach anxious to return home.


There is pretty much agreement by everyone that the football program needs to be suspended.  There are practical concerns, of course – there are no coaches or players.  But there were also emotional wounds that need be healed.

But one player, Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie), who’d missed the trip because of an injury, refuses to take no for an answer.  He organizes a student body protest outside a University board meeting that forces the school to take action.  It isn’t easy.  The first dozen or so coaches Dedmon approaches turn him down.  But Jake Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey, outlandishly dressed, even by early 1970s standards), a coach at the University of Wooster (Ohio), volunteers for the job.

He scrapes together a team and with the assistance of Dedmon, gets the NCAA to allow the school to use freshmen on the varsity team – something prohibited at the time.  The football scenes seemed especially realistic.  There definitely were some fine hits on that field.  For the movie.  In real life, that team was not good; in fact, it was hardly competitive that season and for many seasons to come.  But it united most of the community.

There were problems.  Paul Griffen became so incensed by the return of football that he got Dedmon fired.  Dawson returned to coach – but only for one year and then left football permanently. But the impression left is that winning or losing
or even how they played the game didn’t matter.   That they played at all honored the legacy of those who died.


Yes, I know it is sappy, but then maybe I’m just a sap.

In terms of special features, DVDs are becoming increasingly like regular theaters in terms of commercials.  There’s one at the beginning of the DVD that’s for the West Virginia Tourist Office.  At the end there was a commercial for Marshall University.  In between, however, there was an interesting Legends of Coaching featurette: various Big Time Coaches (John Wooden, Bobby Bowden and Pat Summitt, among others) talking about coaching and leadership.