One of them, Rusty Russell , the father, says it “looks like a castle.” He’s never seen anything like it.
Rusty, suffering from war flashbacks, has left a cushy teaching job to, in his words, do some good by bringing his football chops to a hapless orphanage.
Plus, the children are largely illiterate, and even if he manages to scrape together a team, each member will need to pass a proficiency test to join the league.
The melodramatic kindling stacks up — the premise can be likened to a football “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” — while the film vibrates along with a homely Texas twang.
The problems start with the film’s downright boring use of Martin Sheen as Doc Hall, the doctor and assistant coach who makes up the team’s heart, but the issues are more pervasive.
The film ditches its cogent narrative for increasingly manipulative jabs at inspiration as the team charts a course to regional champions.
Brazenly, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is jammed into the film in a minute-long cameo that turns him into a figurehead for conservative, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, straight talk, despite the policies his administration stood for.
Let’s not forget either — or dwell on much, because this film is abhorrently unnuanced — that the film flags its villains as queer, further embellishing the same appropriative effect.
The one worthwhile message offered by the film, it makes unintentionally: The strive for education is consumed by American athleticism.
But accomplishments are possibly the worst way to convey a person’s spirit — unless the film would like us to believe each of these players’ spirits is one and the same.