On November 14, 1970, as the Marshall Thundering Herd was returning from a football game at East Carolina University, and the chartered plane they were on clipped the trees just short of the runway and crashed, killing 75 people aboard, including most of the football team, the coach, the athletic director, and a number of prominent boosters from Huntington, West Virginia.
Couping this with being kicked out of their conference the year before due to a massive number of rule violations (a fact not exactly mentioned in the movie), school president Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) considers indefinitely suspending the football program at Marshall. Some students convince him otherwise.
Whether or not these students - which if you believe the movie would apparently be most of the student body, since it was a whole lot of bodies - actually demonstrated in this way or not, it's an emotional plea to a board of governors who did not seem interested in bringing football back to Marshall at this point. But because of the impassioned cries of "We Are... Marshall!", they decide to give it a shot.
The only problem is that they have no team, no athletic director, no coach. So the long, painful, rebuilding process begins.
President Dedmon gets on the phone to try and find a coach, and all the alumns that he calls decline - understandable, considering the task that they face. But one man, Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey), calls Dedmon and asks for the job.
He has no ties to Marshall, and may not deserve the job. But he wants it, which automatically puts him in the running. So he gets the job by default.
The first thing he does is meet his players, and then he tries to get an assistant, Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), who survived the ill-fated flight by not making it - he had to go on a recruiting trip elsewhere. At first he doesn't want the job, but eventually he signs on.
While the road is an uphill one, and the emotion probably isn't the strongest, it's a decent story. I'm not sure of the disconnect. It's not that the actors or the acting is bad. It's just not the best. The football is good too. There are moments where you'll laugh, but it's difficult to get totally invested in the characters. It's just not deep enough.
Still, when the "Young Herd" wins their first game that year, it's a good moment - but not a great one. You're happy for them, and I'm sure that the residents of Huntington, or even fans of Marshall, will enjoy the film. It's good. It just seems to gloss things over too much. Perhaps this is the fault of the director - oddly named McG - who typically does music videos. There isn't the depth needed for such a subject. It is good. But it's not great.
Rated PG for emotional thematic material, a crash scene, and mild language.
Comments