We Are Marshall

Matthew McConaughey
Matthew Fox
David Straithairn
Ian McShane
Jennifer Jones

Directed by: McG

Coming home from an away game in 1970, tragedy struck The University of Marshall and the town around it as a plane crash killed the entire football team. The university has to make a decision whether or not to continue the football program. When no one will take the new job as head coach, an assistant from another college agrees to help rebuild the team, and help boost the morale of a town that has been completely crushed by the tragedy.

We Are Marshall attempts to tell the story of probably the most tragic event in sports history, and in doing so has a pretty large responsibility to make a film that shows reverence as well as respect to all of those involved. Also, with these films it seems very easy for these filmmakers to fall into a trap of sports clichés, melodrama, and faux emotion to try and sway an audience. These are fairly easy to spot because they are a staple of most inspirational films. While We Are Marshall is a decent movie, it spends most of the film using old sports clichés and too many moments that are designed to make an audience empathize with the characters to be really be taken seriously.

David Straithairn is wonderful in this film, as he is in most of his films, but the rest of the cast just seems to stand aside as Matthew McConaughey blows into town to take control of the film. McConaughey amps up the Southern folksy casualness and enters the role with just enough charm and sad contemplation to hide what comes across as almost smug. After awhile, his acting just seems to bring down the rest of the film and if there is any real emotion in the film, it plays secondary to McConaughey.

Without knowing more than the basic story behind the tragedy at Marshall University, the film seems to portray the actions of its citizens as basic sports clichés. I’d have to imagine that this wasn’t the case because real life isn’t normally full of clichés. For some reason the makers of this film felt the need to spice up the film by manufacturing moments that we have all seen in other films. Unfortunately, this drags the rest of the film down. We Are Marshall could have been a wonderful, thought provoking film that brought attention to a tragedy that affected a great deal of people. What we are left with is the shell of a film that give us a glancing look at a town in grief, not the deep, intelligent film that would have been more appropriate.
 

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