George Clooney loves sport stories and particularly about teams that shouldn’t have a chance to win, but somehow rise to the occasion. It reminds us of his football film, Leatherheads about a 1920’s football team. But this time it’s about students at the University of Washington during the depression, following a poor young student who needs money to continue in school. Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) wrote the screenplay which is based on Daniel James Brown’s best selling book where a team of inexperienced rowers get to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin in front of Hitler.
Callum Turner with ruffled blond hair (Emma, Fantastic Beasts films) plays the central figure in this drama. He’s Joe Gantz who is about to forced out of school unless he finds a job to make tuition. When he learns there’s a chance to do so if he makes the school’s rowing team, he decides, among hundreds of others, who were in the same boat. Somehow, Joe makes the team and has to work his ass off for Coach Al Ubrickson played understated, with hardly any emotional expression, by Joel Edgerton.
Joe has to learn the sport along with the other guys and how to work effectively as a team. We don’t get enough background nor contrast between Joe and his teammates to get to know them well. His relationship with the guys is very superficial. In a Virtual Press Conference, we found that the crew trained a grueling 5 months to learn the sport, get in shape, and become a team. As expected, Coach is fighting the powers running the program at the school who control the purse strings, and when Ubrickson makes decisions they don’t like, there’s tension. He could lose his job and the program would suffer.
In the meantime, Joe meets Joyce Simdars, (Hadley Robinson -) a girl loaded with personality who falls for him big time. She supports him all the way, even when he’s so involved with rowing, he can think of nothing else.
You’d think that Coach would be Joe’s big supporter, but the person who influences Joe the most, is George Pocock (Peter Guinness), senior who builds and maintains the boats. Some of the most quietly effective scenes are between Joe as he helps varnish and polish the hull of the sculls so there’s absolutely no friction in the water. Their relationship is the most personal one Joe has with any of his team and coach. Guinness is the most empathetic of the cast.
Coach Ulbrickson has to navigate the politics of the school and the sport as well as the athletics. When he bucks his directors by sending the JV team to compete in the Olympics instead of the Varsity, it gets very tense. The scenes showing the perfunctory appearance of Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes), then showing Hitler speaking to the stadium stadium crowd was too short and not ominous enough.
Although Clooney does a good job shooting the come-from-behind-team making headway, it’s coxswain, Shorty, (Bruce Herbelin-Earle) who has the most personality. His intensity motivates the crew and sets the pace and rhythm to cross the finish line.
Clooney and his cinematographer, Martin Ruhe (The Tender Bar, Catch-22, Clooney’s Nespresso ads) shift immediately to the rowing competition itself. Clooney had the challenge showing the crew rowing and making a repetitive motion action sport in the confined space of a racing boat slicing through water appear dramatic. He placed multiple cameras at low angles to see the faces of the athletes and to get a feel for the effort it took to propel the craft, but it’s just not terribly exciting. You know it takes a great deal of strength and coordination, but it’s not very dynamic to watch.
Rowing takes a great deal of strength and coordination, but it’s not very dynamic to watch. Despite the appearance of one of history’s most evil villains, Clooney creates a pleasant, but predictable 2 hour cruise that inspires just enough to cheer about.
MGM 2 hours 3 minutes PG-13
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