Best known for the
Charlie's Angels blockbusters, director McG tries his hand at serious drama with this soggy feature about the tragic November 1970 plane crash that killed most of the football team and coaching staff of Marshall University in West Virginia. Early on there's a powerful re-creation of the crash site in the woods, but more typical of McG's approach is a stylized scene in which hundreds of students stand perfectly silent on a big quadrangle, then go nuts when surviving team member Anthony Mackie raises a defiant fist in the window of an administration building. Matthew McConaughey injects some much needed life as the oddball coach who sets out to rebuild the football squad, and David Strathairn, Ian McShane, and Robert Patrick do their best with sketchy characters and artless dialogue. PG, 124 min.
By
J.R. Jones
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