We’ve enjoyed an impressive run of fact-based sports sagas during the past year — Nyad, The Boys in the Boat and Young Woman and the Sea leap to mind — but in terms of amazing actual events, this one’s the best.
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| As JB (Jay Hernandez, standing center) quietly waits, a clearly surprised Frank (Dennis Quaid) absorbs the passion that these boys possess, for the game of golf... and then agrees to coach their fledgling high school team. |
And — oh, yes — it’s also about golf: defined so superbly in 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance as “a game that cannot be won, only played.”
Quintana and co-scripters Paco Farias and Jennifer C. Stetson based their story on Humberto G. Garcia’s 2012 nonfiction book, Mustang Miracle ... and they didn’t need to change much. The actual events are cinematic all by themselves.
The year is 1956, the setting Del Rio, Texas. World War II veteran JB Pena (Jay Hernandez) and his wife, Lucy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) have just moved into town; he has accepted a job as superintendent of the local (segregated) high school. He also loves to golf, and hopes to become a member of the local San Felipe Country Club.
Alas, sponsorship by close friend and war buddy Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quad) isn’t enough to overcome the club’s color barrier, or the patronizing attitudes of Judge Milton Cox (Brett Cullen) and club director Don Glenn (Richard Robichaux), who function as this story’s racist villains.
“I’m afraid there’s just no place for you here,” JB is told.
Both Cullen and Robichaux are persuasively snobbish and condescending, to a degree that makes one want to reach into the screen and smack them.
Of course, the club’s white members have no trouble hiring Latino high school kids as caddies, as long as they “know their place.” Toe the line, and they might even get a five-cent tip.
