Oscar-Winning ‘Undefeated’ Stands Among Best Sports Docs

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Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – “Undefeated” takes some time to connect. It’s like a football team that starts slow and can’t quite find the right play calls for the first quarter. I’ll admit to being nonplussed at the start of the film as it seemed unfocused and a bit disconnected. Then something amazing happens. These guys start to connect. They start to become real. You start to root for them. Feel for them. Even care about them. This is one of the best sports documentaries of the last few years and while I don’t think it should have won in a VERY good year for non-fiction film, I’m really not upset at all that it did.

Damn, 2011 was amazing for documentaries. Werner Herzog made two (“Into the Abyss,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”). Steve James made one nearly as good as his “Hoop Dreams” (“The Interrupters”). Cameron Crowe (“Pearl Jam Twenty”) and Wim Wenders (“Pina”) delivered gems. “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, “ “Being Elmo,” “Hell and Back Again,” “We Were Here” – in many ways, it was a better year for docs than any other kind of film. Which makes it all the more remarkable that a story about a small-town high school football team stole the Oscar, took all the glory, and will probably make more than most of its competitors. The Manassas High School Tigers will not be beaten.

Undefeated
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

It hasn’t always been easy for Manassas. In fact, it’s been the opposite. This low-income school has not produced a team that has won even a SINGLE playoff game in over 100 years. 100 years!!! And you think Detroit Lions fans have it tough. But they never had Bill Courtney, the coach at the center of “Undefeated” and a man who doesn’t understand how to give up. What he does understand is the best way to look at football, how the sport can make winners not through pure conditioning or athletics but through the more important elements of life. He opens the film by saying, “You think football builds character, which it does not. Football reveals character.” He’s almost right. It reveals it but the coach can shape and impact it as it’s being revealed. Such is the story of “Undefeated.”

“Undefeated” is not just the story of a team that was accustomed to losing but started winning, it is several individual stories, about kids who are relatable and sometimes heartbreaking. When a kid sees college football as his only way out of the ghetto how can one not get emotional at watching those doors close on him? The fact is that these kids have to learn harsh lessons including the fact that life isn’t fair. When a kid who has behavioral issues keeps getting chances on the field, how do you explain to the truly sweet kid who tore his knee up and can’t play that he won’t have the same opportunity? It’s devastating. And it’s matched by some amazing highs. It’s that emotional connection with viewers that won the film the Oscar. You WILL cry. If you don’t, check where you left your soul.

Undefeated
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

Emotional trouble, problems at home, injuries – football, especially in high school, is as about what happens off the field as it is what happens between the lines. People like Bill Courtney aren’t just coaches. Especially on the other side of the tracks, many of them are father figures and the good ones can change lives. And yet “Undefeated” doesn’t lose sight of the fact that coaching isn’t even Courtney’s full time job, even if it is enough of his passion that it even takes him away from his family. They give an award at Manassas at the end of the season for the “Uncommon Man” on the team. They’re all good candidates but it is Bill Courtney who is the most uncommon man you’ve seen in a film in sometime because as incredible as some of the stories of these kids are, there will be more games, more seasons, more kids, and we should be grateful there are men like Bill Courtney to guide them.

What “Undefeated” reminded me of is how vulnerable life can be and how much these college players that you watch every week are really just kids. We put athletes on pedestals. “Undefeated” is a striking chronicle of not only how they get there but how many of them fall short. The brilliance of the film is that it is not one that’s really about football at all — the games are only briefly shown in highlights. It’s about the people who play it.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com