| MURDERBALL |
 2005 - USADirectors: Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro
- Reviewed by Linda
But slowly, Murderball started to surprise me. After the beginning, I was thinking that it would be a matter of time before a headache started building in my skull from the over-stimulating movie style. But the movie started to change direction, getting into the lives and minds of the athletes. Goshdarnit, if Murderball didn't end up making me cry not once, but like five times! Former star Joe Soares is one of the main folks featured in the film, and he is a classic movie bad-guy. He's pissed about being cut from the US national team for slowing down with age, so he has gone to Canada to coach for the Canadians. He screams until his face turns bright red, some would say he is verbally abusive to his wife and son (it would be hard to defend him, really), and he is a cocky bastard whose pride and joy is his wall of trophies. The showdown between the Canadian and US teams bookend the film, with Canada humiliating the US in an international competition for the first time in Stockholm, then the intervening two years as the two teams build up to face-off at the Paralympic Games in Athens in 2004. It is a face-off between Joe and his former teammates. Other US athletes are portrayed as well, including the colorful Mark Zupan, as well as other players, all with unique stories about how they became disabled (most of them when they were teens, from various accidents like drunk driving and fistfights, and one from a childhood disease). The men talk candidly about things like women, sex, self-confidence, and depression. Their stories are very moving, and are more universal than you might think. But the story that broke my heart was that of Keith, a motorcross biker who recently broke his neck. While these other guys are confident and adjusted to their life in wheelchairs, we meet Keith just a few months after his accident. The first shot of the young man sees him disheveled and unshaven, as he is helped in and out of his chair in therapy. His eyes are haunted as he looks dead-eyed around the room. He sees other paralyzed people of various severity, and you can see in his expression, "My god, this is the rest of my life." But as the film moves on, and Keith moves home, then moves on with his life, you see the adjustment that all of these young men had to go through. It is a very effective parallel story, and culminates with an excited Keith learning about Quad Rugby from Zupan, who has stopped by the therapy center for some motivational encouragement. It is the human moments like these that make Murderball a top-notch documentary. It succeeds as a sports story, with the final Big Game to top off the film, but it is the journey with the athletes that really fills out the film. The athletes never ask for your pity, which is why you end up caring so much in the end. |
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The first 20 minutes or so of Murderball were exactly what I expected from the advertising campaign. This was a sports movie, with MTV-like fast-paced editing, and a metal soundtrack to kick it up a notch. Athletes crash into each other like gladiators, and even one of the players, Mark Zupan with his fully tattooed arms and legs and menacing goatee, looks like a badass poster-boy for extreme sports if you ever saw one. Oh, yeah, and these athletes are in wheelchairs. The sport is Quad Rugby (aka "murderball"), a sport for quadriplegics in Max Max-like enhanced wheelchairs.
