>>REVIEW
WE ARE MARSHALL
STARRING: Mathew McConaughey and Mathew Fox
DIRECTED BY: McG
Opens Friday, December 22
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We Are Marshall is yet another true-life human drama squeezed through the mold of the Hollywood paradigm to form a quaint piece of homogenized redemption. It is also the second this year to focus on football (the earlier one being Mark Wahlberg’s Invincible). Although I’ve since outgrown my cynical cinaphile stage, able to once again appreciate some of the better orchestrated pieces of studio schmuck (I quite enjoyed Invincible), with this film one must draw a line. Actually, screw the line – one needs a wall built around this type of self-absorbed glorification of human tragedy.
This film is about a 1970 plane crash that killed 75 members of a West Virginia football team (including coaches and staff) and the town of Marshall that battled its grief by soldiering forward with its football program. I was actually taken aback by its level of flagrant sensationalism. To the point that I spent much of the movie in a disturbed state of awe, pondering who would have the balls to blatantly disrespect the moral core of a tragedy with such ham-handed filmmaking? Then of coarse the credits rolled and it all fell into place with these three words – directed by McG.
Superficial commercial and video music director turned seizure-inducing filmmaker, McG, (the Charlie’s Angels movies) must have decided it was time to take a stab at drama – God help us. Just as he has delivered the popcorn flick to a new plain of soulless excess, so too has he succeeded here in applying his over-the-top style and no substance mentality to creating a whole new degree of melodrama.
Starring Mathew McConaughey and the dude from Lost who used to be Charlie in Party of Five (Mathew Fox), the movie boasts all the things you might laugh at in the next Matt Stone/Trey Parker endeavour – indulgent cinematography including unnecessary crane shots and an abundance of focus pulls complete with soft, warm lighting on every character in every scene (save for those in atmospheric rain). Cue the brooding string movement.
Anything worth meditating on regarding this stricken town’s story is lost in the film’s self-aggrandizing cinematography and disingenuous screenplay, the end result being a slap in the face of the memory of those lost. |
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