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Studio:Warner Home Video

Director:McG

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Matthew Fox, Anthony Mackie, David Strathairn, Ian McShane

Running Time:131 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review

There seems to be no end to "beating-the-odds" American football movies these days, but We Are Marshall, based on a true story, is in the top tier of that clutch of movies. Matthew McConaughey plays Jack Lengyel, who becomes head coach--more or less by default--of Marshall University's rebuilding varsity American football team in Huntington, West Virginia, after the school's 37-member team and coaches (and a number of others) die in a plane crash in the Appalachian Mountains on November 14, 1970. Facing an indifferent college president (David Strathairn) ready to shut the football program down, a morose assistant coach (Matthew Fox of Lost fame), and a charged-up player (Anthony Mackie) who missed the doomed flight due to an injury, Lengyel is faced with fielding a new team and putting the players through their paces. There are the usual, perhaps too-familiar, training montages and field action, but screenwriter Jamie Linden and director McG (Charlie's Angels) also draw some very good performances from the likes of Kate Mara and Ian McShane, contributing to an emotional tapestry conveying a powerful sense of how such a sizable loss affects a small community. --Sally Giles

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