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We Are Marshall Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG (for emotional thematic material, a crash scene, and mild language) Genre: Drama, Sports Theater release: December 22, 2006 by Warner Bros. Directed by: McG Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes Cast: Matthew McConaughey (Jack Lengyel), Matthew Fox (Red Dawson), Anthony Mackie (Nate Ruffin), David Strathairn (Donald Dedmon), Ian McShane (Paul Griffen). Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

It's easy to see why Hollywood loves sports movies. As movie formulas go, the genre's conventions are as sturdy and reliable as they come. Love and war may be more universal themes, but fewer than one in ten romantic comedies are any good, while war movies can be a hard sell. Plus, those genres tend toward the PG-13 or higher end of the spectrum, potentially limiting audience share.

A sports flick promises uplift, overcoming adversity, sacrifice, teamwork (if it's a team sport), and a crowd-pleasing finale—often enough with a family-friendly PG rating. Best of all, it doesn't have to be great to be good enough. Films like Remember the Titans, Miracle, The Rookie and Cinderella Man connect solidly with sports fans and non-fans alike, while even lesser efforts, like this year's Invincible and Glory Road, deliver more or less what they're meant to.

It would be a shame if "genre fatigue" prevents We Are Marshall from being recognized as what it is, one of the better sports films in recent years. More than most films of its ilk, We Are Marshall rises above the clichés that define the genre, connecting sport to larger issues in an emotionally satisfying way.

Like many sports films, We Are Marshall is based on a true story—the 1970 crash of a charter plane carrying virtually the whole Marshall University Thundering Herd football team, nearly the whole coaching staff, and 22 local boosters on their way home to Huntington, West Virginia from a game at East Carolina University. There were no survivors.

Matthew McConaughey as Jack Lengyel, the coach tasked with rebuilding Marshall's football program

The disaster, possibly the worst in American sports history, devastated the town, and Marshall's football program—already reeling from a recruiting scandal—seemed unsalvageable. University president Donald Dedmon doubtless spoke for many survivors when he declared the football program dead, making no provision for attempting to restore it.

Obviously, theirs is not the voice that prevails. Yet first-time screenwriter Jamie Linden effectively evokes the perspective of those who want nothing to do with football at Marshall. One player (Brian Geraghty), who missed the plane after oversleeping, is wracked by survivor guilt. Assistant coach Red Dawson (Matthew Fox)—who wasn't on the plane because he opted to drive home from the game—is haunted by memories of sitting in living rooms with the mothers of students he recruited, promising to take care of their sons.

But there are also those for whom it is essential that the plane crash not be the last word for the Thundering Herd. For player Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie, Million Dollar Baby), who missed the East Carolina game due to an arm injury, carrying on isn't just the right thing to do, it's the only thing to do. When he learns about Dedmon's decision to cut the program, he rallies fellow students and residents to support rebuilding it, prevailing upon Dedmon (David Strathairn) to hire a new coach. This turns out to be Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey), a University of Akron graduate and assistant coach with no previous ties to Marshall.

Yet can any cobbled-together Thundering Herd be more than a mocking echo of the team that perished? Is suiting up a ragtag team that can't possibly win in the fallen players' white and green any way of honoring them? Following an early humiliation, Dawson angrily points out to Lengyel that the late head coach and his team lived by the Vince Lombardi credo that winning is everything. "We aren't honoring them—we're disgracing them," he argues, and, really, it's hard to quarrel with him.

University President Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) and a board member Paul Griffen listen to a player's plea to keep the football program alive

Most sports-movie coaches have all the answers. Refreshingly, Lengyel doesn't. He isn't a commanding authority figure like Coach Carter or Herb Brooks from Miracle. He's a competent coach, but he doesn't come in with a winning game plan for transforming a hodgepodge of unpromising athletes into a disciplined, united team. And he's stumped by Dawson's angry misgivings.

Eventually, though, Lengyel finds an intriguing rationale for what he's trying to do—what he wanted to do when he first accepted the job, and has been trying to do since coming to Marshall. Surprisingly, it doesn't involve debunking the idea that winning is everything. That, he agrees, is what sports is all about—and it will be years before the Thundering Herd is ready to rejoin that world. But the only way to get there is by forgetting about results, at least for now. Right now, Lengyel suggests, "it isn't whether we win or lose—or even how we play the game. All that matters is that we play the game."

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