We Are Marshall (2006)

Please don't spend money on this.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

It's a great movie really. I am suprised the overall rating is below 8. But I see the movie has many 10/10 reviews. Watch this movie, guaranteed it'll be 2 hrs well spent

It's 1970. After a tough lose, the Marshall University football team is returning home to Huntington, W.V. The plane crashes killing everyone on board. Injured Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie) didn't play and Red Dawson (Matthew Fox) takes a last-minute recruiting trip. Both misses the plane ride and survives. Cheerleader Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara) loses her boyfriend. The next spring, the town is struggling and football is about to be suspended. Ruffin rallies the students. President Don Dedman (David Strathairn) struggles to find anyone to coach and Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) applies out of the nowhere.Director McG is more restraint visually than normal although he isn't pulling anything back with the sentimental melodrama. This is all played with every heart string at the highest note filled with every cliché. Considering the subject, there is probably no other way to make this. My one main complaint is that the movie needs one lead character to focus on. However, I also do understand the need to spread the commiseration around. The acting is solid and flamboyant McConaughey injects a bit of energy. The film has that sepia tone to heighten the 70s look and McG fills it with era music. The movie is a fully formed tribute but not necessarily a great movie.

Not a great movie, but hard to dislike. Fairly conventional against- all-odds sports movie, with a tragedy as background. Furthermore, it feels overwrought. Everything is over-dramatized and over- sentimentalized. The director blatantly manipulates the audience with syrupy sentiment and grandiose gestures.However, it is difficult to dislike. The whole pulling-oneself-up-by- one's-bootstraps plot is well done, and given due attention. There is also an emotional impact of the team's progress. And who doesn't like a good sports story, especially when it's based on a true story...?Solid performance by Matthew McConaughey in the lead role. Good support from Matthew Fox, Anthony Mackie, David Strathairn, Kate Mara and Ian McShane.

The events that inspired the film We Are Marshall are definitely enough to inspire a great story. The trick is avoiding the many sports movie clichés that are potentially lurking behind every turn of the page of any possible screenplay. To its credit, this film avoids a lot of them, and uses its characters and its atmosphere to make the ones we see a little more forgivable. The tragic 1970 plane crash that took the lives of most Marshall University football players, boosters, and athletic department personnel is a story most sports fans are familiar with. This film doesn't provide us with any insight into its cause, or give us many of the details we didn't already know. What it does, and quite effectively, is focus on the survivors and how they attempt to move on. The school very nearly ended its football program, and nobody could have blamed them if they had never played another game. Funny thing about football... its just too much a part of our national passion to ever give it up.This film could have easily been a feel-good vehicle for Matthew McConaughey, but luckily they had the sense to dial his presence down a tad. He certainly still stands out and gives a charismatic performance, but he isn't even introduced until well into the film as Jack Lengyel, the coach who will be the first to lead the Thundering Herd back onto the field. Matthew Fox as the only surviving assistant from the past coaching staff also does fine as the conflicted coach who takes a great deal of convincing before he joins the new staff. Film does a great job detailing the difficulty of blending new players with the few surviving ones who were not on the plane. Even in the heart of a tragedy, boys will still be boys... especially when they play football at a major university.Of course we get the "big game" climax at the film's conclusion, but since this one is based on fact, the cliché is a lot easier to take. The film is visually impressive and seems to give great attention to detail. West Virginia is quite a beautiful place, and there are some scenes where the surroundings on the horizon take on a character of their own. I was generally surprised at how much I liked this film. I was expecting something a little more artificial. Not only is it thoughtful and nostalgic, but it shows us how many lives can be lost and transformed in one instant. 8 of 10 stars.The Hound.