We Are Marshall Review

Bottom-Line: "WE ARE (ALL) MARSHALL."    

Directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol a.k.a. McG We Are Marshal begins with Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara) the fiancée of one of the dead players, narrating as the tragedy that was the plane crash of November 14, 1970 unfolds on the screen.  The Thundering Herd football team of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia had just lost a home game and were flying to their next match up when the team plane crashed, killing all aboard. 

The Varsity team was wiped out save four seniors and the team had to be re-built from scratch.  The university president Dr. Dedmon (David Strathaim) brings in Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) to coach the team, after Red Dawson (Matthew Fox) the only surviving member of the Marshall University athletic department turns him down.  Dawson would later come back as assistant coach. 

My Viewpoint

We Are Marshall isn't a deep movie, McG did not dig deeply into the lives of those involved, indeed we know these people only on the surface, but in this case a cursory understanding is all that is needed.  McG deftly intersperse hard-hitting football action with close-up emotional torment; tears flow freely from the eyes of men and woman in this film with equal eagerness, and it had an effect on this reviewer.  From quivering hands to beseeching swelling eyes, to simmering anger, the cast opens the door to the emotional toll such a tragedy must have taken on such a close-knit American town like Huntington WV. 

We Are Marshall is an unabashedly sentimental, but inspiring movie that leans heavily on McConaughey's and substantial energy and charisma as well as Fox's quiet, dignified strength for its success.   And succeed it does as a story well worth telling about a town and University well worth knowing.  "WE ARE (ALL) MARSHALL."