Undefeated (2012)

Instant Favorite.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film is about a football program at a high school with a long tradition of losing. Despite having been around for over a hundred years, they've never won a playoff game and recently went entire seasons without a win. This film follows their much more successful coach and the team through the course of a season and you see the team's ups and downs."Undefeated" is a decent sports documentary and is worth seeing if you like this sort of thing. Oddly, however, after I watched it I learned that the film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature....and I am not really sure why. It's good, but ESPN makes a lot of documentaries that are as good or better. I guess I just am not the target audience or the Oscar folks saw something in it that I just didn't see.

This is the story of the Manassas High School football team and their coach. It is a predominately black school in Tennessee. They have never had much success because they are lacking in every area, money, hope, and talent. A white coach who pretty much gives his entire life to his young charges, works to get them successful in the classroom and on the field. They have a chance to win the first playoff game in the history of the school, but he must nursemaid them in every way he can to get them to that point. They have one division one prospect, a huge offensive lineman, whose academics are at issue. He has a loose cannon kid who has spent time in prison and has just returned, carrying his baggage onto the team. There is nothing simplistic about this film. These young men have two strikes against them and this is a chance to be true team. It's hard to reproduce the heart that is in this movie. Just see it and ask yourself if it isn't one of the best sports films you've ever seen.

I watch a lot of movies; I mean A LOT of movies. I've been very interested in the art of communicating stories in a meaningful way since the days of "Grave Marauders" back in the 5th grade. I've acted in quite a few plays, attended an acting school in Hollywood, worked at Pixar, etc. So I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on how to discriminate between good and bad films. Also, in addition to growing up without a father, experiencing first-hand the struggles that come as a result, I also had the privilege to serve as a School Resource Officer for a couple of years. That experience gave me the opportunity, in a greater social context, to see the fallout of young men growing up without fathers. Day after day I witnessed young men with incredible potential, sabotage their own lives as they struggled to figure out who they are, what it means to be a man, and do their best to figure out how to become one.In my opinion, young men growing up with absent fathers is one of the most damaging social epidemics of our time, the consequences of which leave devastating and painful scars that negatively impact every single aspect of our culture. To aggravate matters more, the very source of the problem (the absence of strong, positive male leaders) is the very reason why progress toward the solution is so slow. It is very difficult to find men of character who are willing and strong enough to endure the friction and frustration that comes as a result of attempting to mentor these frustrated and lost, yet very bright and talented young men.How inspiring it was to have this film introduce us to a true man and leader like Bill Courtney. I absolutely love that the film did not paint him to be someone he is not; that they showed us his moments of weakness and frustration as well as his moments of victory, strength, and success. Too often, I think that men shrink from opportunities to serve in meaningful ways because we are led to believe that we have to be perfect; that we have to have it all together. The lives of the young men he coached are forever changed in fantastic and positive ways that, had he not stepped up, would otherwise never have happened.The following point is the greatest thing of all to me: Not only have their lives been enriched as a result of Bill Courtney being involved, but the world becomes a better place as well. These young men will go on to have a positive impact on their families and communities and, even if it's only in a small way, the world becomes a better place; all because Bill Courtney cared about those young men. He wasn't perfect; he got mad and frustrated and cursed and fought. But he was present; he was there. He cared for those young men, and they knew it.It just goes to show that, when a strong leader, even an imperfect one, takes the time to help rebuild the broken emotional foundation of a young man, and teaches them how to recognize and appreciate their own value, it empowers that young man to unleash his talents, gifts, skills, abilities, goodness, and potential upon the world… making it a better place.This movie is FANTASTIC and is by far one of my very favorites. It is a MUST SEE.

Most of us like an underdog story, and this 2012 Academy Awards Best Documentary feature has all the standard elements that make up an award winning one. Directed and photographed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Undefeated follows a season of high school football team in their quest to secure a berth in the playoffs, being led by volunteer coach Bill Courtney, who has given up tremendous time over the last six seasons to follow his passion, and becoming a much lauded figure in the school for his tough love ways to turn around wayward boys, and boys with potential, into team players."Football doesn't build character. Football reveals character" is Courtney's philosophical take- away, and much of this documentary is a testament to that. In following this particular season as produced for the film, the filmmakers probably didn't know how it would have turned out, and it's very much contrary to the title of the movie. Then again, we may not be referring to the scoreline and results of the season, but to the spirit of the team that Courtney had developed this particular system that's under the filmmaker's lens and scrutiny, and the drilling down to the more micro, and personal level, amongst a select group of players that were paid a special focus.One of the arcs may seem a little bit like The Blind Side, where a giant of a player got to stay with one of the coaches for a little while, in order to get his academic grades back on track in order to qualify for college. A college sports career is almost a given for O.C. Brown, but to get there meant a decent academic score. With players who come from troubled backgrounds, there are no lack of contenders making up the subjects for the documentary, especially amongst a large football team, and it goes to show how challenging a coach's job is in order to keep track of the team's progress in the game, the training, and the managing of plenty of egos, especially that of a hot head who just got released from junior penitentiary, and looks set to disrupt team dynamics.And precisely why this documentary turned out a winner, is the very presence of Bill Courtney, and his story. Owner of a lumber business, he had sacrificed family time for game time to pursue his passion for coaching in a school that doesn't have a remarkable history in the game, and it is his unrelenting belief, and methods, that really made Undefeated engaging, rich, and moving, especially when doing so without much concrete rewards for six years. It is the crossroads he is in now, having to measure time spent with the school players, and that of his own children, that is niggling at the back of his mind, especially so when the team he has at his disposal this year has shown some remarkable progress. It's real family versus adopted family, and it's indeed cruel, yet inevitable in having presented no real choice where one's priorities should reside in.Told in chronological order with plenty of games highlighted, each that will make you continuously root for the players and coaches we've grown accustomed to, this sports documentary covers a broad spectrum of the game, and the people behind the game. Yet it has plenty of soul in tackling the different story arcs amongst the people, that makes it a lot more powerful, rather than being just another sports movie that countless of Hollywood products have been produced, that tells of similarly inspiring, or heartwarming stories about superb coaches, and underdog teams making it good. At the end of the day, what matters are the relationships that we forge, and probably the value and legacy we leave behind, that matters more than fleeting results. As Bill Courtney puts it, the measure of a man is not when he wins, but when he is defeated, and his reaction to that defeat, that matters the most. Recommended!