Written by: Jamie Linden
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Matthew Fox, Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie, Kate Mara
Rating: [3/5]
For all of the unhealthy extremism it can bring, football in a small town has a way to unite people in ways that can be quite beautiful. A place to congregate and all root for the same cause, which makes the moments of collective pain as exhibited in We Are Marshall so much more devastating. Operating as a standard sports film, this movie works in just enough of what we can appreciate about this genre while also wringing out all of the emotion this story calls for.
Following a tough loss, the football team of Marshall University all die in a plane crash on their way back to campus that also included coaches and others flying with the team. Devastating the community, the football program starts from scratch by hiring head coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) to take the reigns. Still grieving, the football team seeks to reunify the community.
The loss felt by the community of Huntington, West Virginia when that plane crashed exceeds the sport of football, rightfully. While seeing it through the prism of the sport serves as our main vantage point, this community lost a group of men, young and old instantly. What should have been a short flight from North Carolina to West Virginia ended in a disaster that shook everyone to their core. Each of these players and coaches existed outside of the football field and had family members who lost their loved ones instantly. These different threads stick out in the grieving process in the brief interactions we get and while it takes the emotional hold of the story, it’s where this feature begins to struggle.
By taking the approach of looking at the larger community and their grief, We Are Marshall introduces many characters who have connections to the football players who passed. That includes Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara), who was engaged to one of the players who died in the crash. There’s also Paul Griffin (Ian McShane) who was the father of Annie’s fiancé also grieving a loss. Then you have assistant coach Red Dawson (Matthew Fox) who chose not to fly back with the team and avoided death by pure happenstance. A guilt that riddles through his mind throughout this film. Those mentioned present the main threads of processing grief but then sprinkle a whole bunch of other smaller ones that have worth but do not receive even a sliver of time to pay off. It makes these smaller payoffs in the third act of the film ring hollow when we barely spend time with these characters. Heck, this even transpires with Annie and Paul who get plenty of screen time but not much substance to work with throughout the narrative.
When it focuses on football, the true charm of the film comes out as we have these plucky underdogs coming together to craft a team. Putting one together in the best circumstances comes with a host of challenges, but adding in the tragedy this university and community has experienced makes it even more difficult. Cue the charismatic performance by Matthew McConaughey and it makes all of these team-building moments feel vivacious. He enters the story of a coach just looking to help and the way McConaughey saunters around as Jack Lengyel demonstrates this man has always had the necessary charm, to pull off any role. He brings this energy to what it takes to bring this football program back and help uplift a community rightfully struggling to stand on their two feet following what occurred. He knows the task ahead of him and rightfully shifts the perspective.
As standard as they get for sports movies, We Are Marshall has the hook you need that brings in the emotion of the circumstance. While it does not have a great handle on the way it deals with all of the characters it introduces, what it manages to do as a whole can be seen as a success. It boasts a surprisingly strong cast, along with Matthew McConaughey which includes Anthony Mackie, David Strathairn, Ian McShane, Kate Mara, and January Jones. As each of them appeared on screen it continued to surprise me. They all do what they can with their minimal screen time but they all serve the larger whole of what makes this movie work.
Films with Josh 
