This seems to be the season for inspirational, fact-based underdog stories, and we’ve got another good one.
Indeed, I’m surprised it took so long for this astonishing saga to hit the big screen.
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| As a meager few spectators watch, coach Rusty Russell (Luke Wilson, left), Doc Hall (Martin Sheen, right) and a dispirited Snoggs (Jacob Lofland) contemplate the disaster unfolding on the football field. |
Events begin when Rusty Russell (Luke Wilson), his wife Juanita (Vinessa Shaw) and their little daughter Betty (Josie Fink) drive onto the grounds of the Fort Worth Masonic Widows and Orphans Home. Rusty has just become the institution’s head football coach: a significant step down from his previous successful position at Temple High School, and a decision made even stranger by the fact that Fort Worth Masonic doesn’t have a football team.
Heck, it doesn’t even have a football field: merely an open stretch of gravel, rocks and grass occupied by scrawny goats.
(The actual Russell had a good reason for this apparently rash and impulsive decision: a crucial detail poorly hinted at, in the otherwise solid script by Roberts, Lane Garrison and Kevin Meyer. Brief and vague flashbacks to Russell’s WWI trench experience aren’t sufficient.)
The challenge seems insurmountable, given that most of the older boys — the few with any potential, only 12 of whom qualify — are as scrawny as the aforementioned goats. They’re also an unkempt, ill-mannered and under-education bunch, with a tendency to quarrel and fight each other. That’s particularly true of the newest arrival, Hardy Brown (Jake Austin Walker), delivered — his clothes ominously covered in fresh blood — by the local sheriff.
Most of the other boys go by nicknames: Snoggs (Jacob Lofland), Wheatie (Slade Monroe), Fairbanks (Levi Dylan) and so forth.
Their belligerence and uncooperative natures aside, the enormity of Rusty’s endeavor becomes clear when the field is cleared for the first practice. He expected the absence of anything resembling uniforms, but the boys don’t even have shoes. Nor is there a football, so Juanita and Betty improvise a substitute.
Despite all this, Rusty remains hopeful; he senses an inner spirit, a yearning for pride, waiting to be nurtured. He understands that those who have nothing, and are given an opportunity to amount to something, will fight like hell to embrace and retain it.
Wilson is ideal for this role; he exudes an unruffled, aw-shucks optimism matched by a warm, embracing smile. Rusty never raises his voice, and his deceptively mild appearance is deliberately misleading; he wins discussions and arguments via disarming persuasion, invariably leaving the other guy wondered how and why he yielded.
Martin Sheen is equally well-cast as E.P. “Doc” Hall, a country physician who serves as something of a caretaker for the orphanage. He’s a crusty blend of tart Texas flintiness and twinkling good humor: a familiar cinematic archetype that Sheen nonetheless makes fresh. The affection everybody holds for him notwithstanding, Doc also has a tragic side exacerbated by too much alcohol.
That makes him a perfect match for Rusty, battling his own PTSD demons.
The two men do their best to shape the team, and the first actual game is an anticipated disaster. But even this proves instructive, because Rusty is inspired — due to the fact that his players always are dwarfed and outweighed by the competition — to create the “spread formation” that subsequently became a game staple.
(As Dent wrote in his book, this “allowed [Rusty’s] players to run through the competition like a bunch of field mice.”)
Then, to everybody’s amazement, the tide begins to turn. Suddenly the “Mighty Mites” — as they’re soon dubbed — become media darlings at a time when the entire country needs something to root for, gaining the attention of even President Roosevelt (Larry Pine).
Treat Williams pops up as Fort Worth Star-Telegram founder and publisher Amon G. Carter. Robert Duvall has an even briefer cameo as the fictitious Mason Hawk, a “wise old guy” — and former orphan — who offers guidance at one point.
Walker is appropriately confrontational as the uncooperative Hardy: the “tough kid” Rusty will have the most trouble reaching. Lofland, a busy actor perhaps remembered from a season of television’s Justified, is endearing as the meek but earnest Snoggs.
Comedian Wayne Knight, late of Seinfeld, is oddly miscast as a bullying orphanage teacher/administrator who enjoys beating the boys. The role is badly written — as if this token “villain” is somehow necessary — and poorly played.
Production designer Drew Boughton and cinematographer David McFarland give the film an authentically gritty, grimy and dilapidated atmosphere — with a color palette favoring dusty earth tones — that reflects the era’s hopeless, dispirited mood.
Most of the production was filmed in Fort Worth — Roberts knew they didn’t dare go anywhere else — and he grabbed plenty of locals as extras. He and editor James K. Crouch choreograph the football action for a winning blend of suspense, heartbreak, agony and triumph.
Archival photos and text blocks that precede the end credits reveal just how inspirational Rusty, Doc Hall and those 12 rag-tag footballers became.
As I said at the top … what took this film so long?
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