by Thomas Ferguson

On November 14, 1970, the most devastating tragedy in college sports history shook the lives of hundreds and brought an entire town to its knees. Huntington, West Virginia was a town proud of its Thundering Herd. Their Marshall University football team was traveling home on a chartered plane when it crashed, killing all 75 on board. That crash and the town’s grief is the focus of Warner Brother’s Studio’s new release We Are Marshall.

Matthew McConaughey plays Coach Jack Lengyel, the only coach interested in taken this job that absolutely no one else wanted. He takes on the responsibility of rebuilding this team from the ground up. He recruits Red Dawson (Lost’s Matthew Fox), who actually gave up his seat on the plane, to find a new coaching staff and new players.

This new venture draws mixed reactions from the town. Most of them want to suspend the football program altogether to allow the town enough time to heal. Others believe that life and football must go on. One such believer is Nate Ruffin (Half Nelson’s Anthony Mackie), a football player who was supposed to be on the plane himself, but had to sit out of the game because of a shoulder injury. He almost single-handedly lead the campaign to keep the program alive.

Once the team is assembled, the real work begins. Lengyel must make his players play into one team, which is hard to do when there is resentment against the new players by people who knew and loved the old players.

Winning is usually everything in sports and Lengyel believes that to be true, but not in this case. He believes that in order to honor the memory of the old team, his new team must play with their hearts. Winning isn’t the goal, just being on the field is victory enough.

We Are Marshall was a good movie overall, but it was a bit long-winded for me. There were numerous monologues about team spirit and speeches about moving on. Two or three motivational speeches would have sufficed, but the screenwriters gave us one of these little gems every five minutes. It became very repetitive and somewhat annoying.

That being said, Director McG, captured the spirit of that small town and made an emotional movie that will touch the heart of the any sports fan. There was a lot of sap thrown throughout, but by the final frame, I admit, I shed a tear.

I realized that this wasn’t a story some screenwriter just came up with, this was a true story about real people who suffered the ultimate tragedy. You can’t help but to be swept up into their story. Not the best sports movie I’ve seen, but one that is full of passion and lots of heart.