"We Are Marshall" - Inspiring and Uplifting Despite the Tragedy

We Are Marshall starts out with a tragedy and deals directly with it for the first 30 minutes of the movie. Just when you think you can't cry anymore and, perhaps, enough is enough, director McG (Charlie's Angels) switches the film's focus and turns a tragic story into a most inspirational and uplifting one.

On November 14, 1970 a chartered plane carrying 75 people including most of the Marshall football team along with coaches, alumni and boosters, crashed less then two miles from the airport killing everyone aboard. To this day it is the worst sports-related disaster in this country's history. The town is left in a virtual catatonic state as most everyone lost someone they knew or loved.

As the tragedy is dealt with the question comes, what to do with the football program? This question is posed by Nate Ruffin, one of the four players who didn't make the trip due to a shoulder injury (another player missed the trip because he overslept the day before and was being punished by the coach). School President Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) suggests, not surprisingly, that the program is being suspended indefinitely with the possibility of the program never being reinstated. The NCAA didn't allow freshmen to start games and, besides, it is fairly unreasonable for anyone to expect the program to be rebuilt and ready to play for the 1971 season. Ruffin arranges for all students and faculty to gather under the President's window where they chant, "We are - Marshall." Strathairn in touched by this but turns to Ruffin and honestly tells him, "I wouldn't even know where to start."

But start he does. The first task is looking for a head coach. He makes a long list of candidates and is turned down by each and every one of them. Then along comes Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) who not only wants the job but also actually called them about it. Lengyel is given the job purely because there is no one else available and soon finds he has a daunting task ahead of him. Not only does every top prospect in the area sign with West Virginia, but also the NCAA still refuses to budge on its freshman policy.

Lengyel forges ahead anyway with the help of Red Dawson (Matthew Fox, Jack from TV's Lost), who is living with the fact that he exchanged his seat on the flight with another coach so that coach could go to his granddaughter's piano recital instead of taking a recruiting trip. Red also lives with another hard fact, "I recruited twenty boys and looked each of their mother's in the eyes and promised them I would take care of their sons. And now there isn't one of them left." Red takes some convincing but does agree to rejoin the program for one year only.

Together they go out and accomplish what is thought impossible - recruiting a team to field for the next season. Not everyone they get is quite the athlete they expect (the kicker plays on the soccer team) but it is a team nonetheless. They also get some unexpected help from then West Virginia coach Bobby Bowden, who sees beyond competition though he does remark that it helps the two teams are not playing one another that season.

The film also deals with the townspeople and the notion by some of them that it is perhaps disrespectful to start the football program up again. Ian McShane plays one such father who lost his son, the team's quarterback, on the flight. His son was engaged to marry one of the cheerleader's, and part time waitress at the local diner. She tries to give the engagement ring back to him as it was his to his now deceased wife, and she feels an obligation to stay in his life, as he has no one else. Their walk along the Ohio River towards the end of the film is one of the best scenes of the film.

Lengyel does the best with what he has and promotes courage and a strong will to compete over talent. He believes that a team can prepare to play another based on that talent, but not on what's in their heart. He effectively communicates this in a scene where he takes the entire program to the cemetery where six of the players are buried together because they were never identified. It's a heartening scene and not the least bit maudlin as it could have been. McConaughey carries the scene with truth and conviction, and delivers the best performance of his career.

In the end, We Are Marshall is not just another sports movie. Yes there are scenes of football but they aren't the usual clichéd scenes we've come to expect from this type of movie. The film doesn't even end with the usual underdog versus Goliath in the championship game. The film is about life and death and how we deal, or don't deal, with loss. After the very serious opening act the film doesn't bog the audience down with sadness but with real emotions that make one feel a sense of good. Not many films can achieve that but We Are Marshall is one of them.

Whether you like football or not makes no difference. This is a film that deserves to be seen.