Undefeated

I don't write too many reviews on here, but I felt I had to after seeing the "5.5" rating (03-13- 2012) on IMDb. What the hell is up with this? In my view, "Undefeated" deserves an easy 10 out of 10. I believe 'Undefeated' could easily have been the best picture of 2011. Period.

I just saw the film a few days ago. Disclaimer: I HATE football movies. I couldn't care less. Until I saw 'Undefeated.' Yes, it got my attention after winning Best Documentary after the Oscars. I was almost reluctant to go see it (I work in documentary filmmaking), but when I did, I was absolutely floored. Like, tears in my eyes as I exited the theater floored.

'Undefeated' isn't really a football movie. It's a documentary about an impoverished community that rallies around their highschool football team to try and turn things around, to try and lift their hopes, spirits and dreams. It's a film that shows the real struggles of real people that you care about. It's about young men redefining their lives after spending years in prison. It's about young men fighting to escape the abject poverty they were born into. It's about young men trying to prove that they can find success if they try hard enough. And of course, you have the Coach who pursues his impossibly vision of turning this failed football team around, by becoming a father figure and using inspiration as his primary tool.

The thing that makes all of this truly special, is that these are REAL PEOPLE. This is not some scripted Hollywood blockbuster starting the latest pop-culture stars. 'Undefeated' cuts deep into real emotions and isn't afraid to expose us for who we are, for better or worse. This is stuff of high-drama that tops even the best of scripted films.

'Undefeated' makes 'The Artist,' look like a Coke commercial. It makes 'Midnight in Paris' look like a Saturday morning cartoon. 'Undefeated' is true drama. True emotion. Real life. It pulls you in with charming fascinating 'characters', and it pulls you along, feeling every rise, every fall, every victory, every setback. If you have a heart, you will cry. For sadness, and for joy. This film has it all. Of all the movies released in 2011, this is the one that counts.

I saw this the first time it was available in LA during the Oscar qualifying period. This film is a true accomplishment and one of the strongest contenders in the field. I was moved to tears on a number of occasions. The struggles of the players and coach Bill resonated with alarming clarity.

Some people could compare it to THE BLIND SIDE, which I also enjoyed. I feel as though this film tells an even larger story in the same amount of time -- something you can get away with more often in documentary, I suppose. However, I often forgot that I was watching a documentary, because the things these filmmakers were able to capture created a remarkable sense of flow.

This is one of those films I recommend to everyone.

I should probably begin by apologizing-- calling this a "football movie" is a bit demeaning. Superficially, it's accurate, but the true subject of "Undefeated" is the education of inner-city kids through the competition of sports. If you value the lessons team sports can teach, or if you care about kids trying to pull themselves up from desperate circumstances, then I have to believe this is a film you want to see.

I had the privilege of seeing it a couple of months ago at the Chicago International Film Festival, with an audience that I'd wager was comprised mostly of people who didn't grow up in violent inner-city neighborhoods, and there were scenes in this film that reduced many of us in that audience to tears. These weren't tears of self-serving pity, either, but of admiration at what the Manassas Tigers accomplished in this wonder of a season. The film follows the storytelling tradition of the championship season, for the most part, but it's tough to criticize a documentary film for adherence to cliché. In fact, there are scenes in this that you'd dismiss as improbable in a fiction film, and scenes of such close personal observation that you wonder how the filmmakers got them on camera. These filmmakers had astonishing access to coach Bill Courtney and his players O.C. Brown, Montrail "Money" Brown, and the remarkable Chavis Daniels. You will get to know them so well over the course of the film that you might hope for a sequel. I know I do.

My only criticism of the film may not strike you as criticism at all-- in the Q&A session I attended with the filmmakers, they said they cut over an hour of footage to get the film's running time down for the theatrical market. As enthralled as I was with this film, I gladly would have watched another hour-- I wanted to meet more of these players and learn more about their lives. As such, at this length, the film doesn't quite rise to the level of "Hoop Dreams," as that film masterfully integrated its focus on sports into a larger narrative of inner-city life. But "Undefeated" comes awfully close, especially in one of the most moving scenes I've ever seen in a documentary, when a kid gets a piece of news that will change his life forever. You want to see this scene. You want to see this film.

Most of us like an underdog story, and this 2012 Academy Awards Best Documentary feature has all the standard elements that make up an award winning one. Directed and photographed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Undefeated follows a season of high school football team in their quest to secure a berth in the playoffs, being led by volunteer coach Bill Courtney, who has given up tremendous time over the last six seasons to follow his passion, and becoming a much lauded figure in the school for his tough love ways to turn around wayward boys, and boys with potential, into team players.

"Football doesn't build character. Football reveals character" is Courtney's philosophical take- away, and much of this documentary is a testament to that. In following this particular season as produced for the film, the filmmakers probably didn't know how it would have turned out, and it's very much contrary to the title of the movie. Then again, we may not be referring to the scoreline and results of the season, but to the spirit of the team that Courtney had developed this particular system that's under the filmmaker's lens and scrutiny, and the drilling down to the more micro, and personal level, amongst a select group of players that were paid a special focus.

One of the arcs may seem a little bit like The Blind Side, where a giant of a player got to stay with one of the coaches for a little while, in order to get his academic grades back on track in order to qualify for college. A college sports career is almost a given for O.C. Brown, but to get there meant a decent academic score. With players who come from troubled backgrounds, there are no lack of contenders making up the subjects for the documentary, especially amongst a large football team, and it goes to show how challenging a coach's job is in order to keep track of the team's progress in the game, the training, and the managing of plenty of egos, especially that of a hot head who just got released from junior penitentiary, and looks set to disrupt team dynamics.

And precisely why this documentary turned out a winner, is the very presence of Bill Courtney, and his story. Owner of a lumber business, he had sacrificed family time for game time to pursue his passion for coaching in a school that doesn't have a remarkable history in the game, and it is his unrelenting belief, and methods, that really made Undefeated engaging, rich, and moving, especially when doing so without much concrete rewards for six years. It is the crossroads he is in now, having to measure time spent with the school players, and that of his own children, that is niggling at the back of his mind, especially so when the team he has at his disposal this year has shown some remarkable progress. It's real family versus adopted family, and it's indeed cruel, yet inevitable in having presented no real choice where one's priorities should reside in.

Told in chronological order with plenty of games highlighted, each that will make you continuously root for the players and coaches we've grown accustomed to, this sports documentary covers a broad spectrum of the game, and the people behind the game. Yet it has plenty of soul in tackling the different story arcs amongst the people, that makes it a lot more powerful, rather than being just another sports movie that countless of Hollywood products have been produced, that tells of similarly inspiring, or heartwarming stories about superb coaches, and underdog teams making it good.

At the end of the day, what matters are the relationships that we forge, and probably the value and legacy we leave behind, that matters more than fleeting results. As Bill Courtney puts it, the measure of a man is not when he wins, but when he is defeated, and his reaction to that defeat, that matters the most. Recommended!

North Memphis looks rough. Its houses are collapsing, its public infrastructure is crumbling, and its prospects on the horizon look like its bringing more of the same. Undefeated says life in North Memphis was not always like this, but once the Firestone plant closed and took the jobs away, this part of the city was forgotten. The residents feel they are not only second class citizens in Tennessee, which focuses more on Nashville in the center and Knoxville in the east, but second class in their own city.

One bright spot is a brand new, state of the art high school; the new home of the Manassas Tigers. Entering Manassas High School, however, is more akin to going through airport security than going to a place to learn. During his first football meeting of the year with his team, Coach Bill Courtney mentions starting players getting shot, jail sentences, and academic suspensions, issues a coach may encounter throughout their entire career, but these are issues he has dealt with in the past two weeks. North Memphis is definitely not Dillon, Texas and Manassas High School resembles nothing of the Friday Night Lights Dillon Panthers; this is real life.

Coach Courtney spends the vast majority of his time preaching character, discipline, and respect to a crowd of high school kids who do not seem very interested in receiving those messages. They are more concerned with fighting amongst themselves than focusing on beating the other team on the football field. Instead of studying plays in film sessions or running through football fundamentals, Coach constantly has to break up fights, convince the kids not to drop out of school, and remind them that a man's character is revealed on the football field.

Incredibly, Coach is a volunteer. He does not get paid to spend grueling hours every day trying to teach football and life lessons to a bunch of kids who usually seem to be tuning him out. He sees something more in them though, much more than they see in themselves. He feels it in his bones that if these kids learn to focus on the team instead of themselves; they will not only win on the football field, but in the classroom, and later on in life. This sounds like a scripted TV show, but it is very real and Coach Courtney is dead serious about it.

One player who visibly understands the Coach's vision is also the team's best player, left tackle O.C. Brown. O.C. reminds you of Michael Oher from The Blind Side. He is a huge human being but has a quiet, almost meek, personality. He is not strong academically though and is having trouble getting the minimum score for college scholarship eligibility on the ACT. In one of the stronger episodes of the film, O.C. gets a one-on-one tutor and stays three to four nights a week at a coach's house because no tutors would ever go see O.C. in his home neighborhood. The filmmaker wisely includes social commentary about why it is always the gifted athletic star that gets so much specific help and never just a regular kid.

There are only two other members of the football team who get noticeable screen time and they are right tackle Montrail 'Money' Brown and team troublemaker Chavis Daniels. Money is under-sized for his position but plays with so much intensity that he is a very strong member of the offensive line. He has a 3.8 GPA and has his sights set on becoming a football manager or lawyer because he knows he is far too small for college ball. Chavis has just returned from school from a 15 month leave of absence because he was in juvenile detention. He has an incredibly short fuse and will instigate a fight in a moment's notice. The back and forth comparisons between Money and Chavis work to the film's credit. Money gets injured and wonders why he can barely get a second chance on the football field when he sees Chavis still causing trouble on the team even though he is on his 50th chance.

Through the unending and amazingly persistent efforts of Coach Courtney, the Manassas Tigers start winning games and the kids' conduct both on and off the field are noticeably improved from the film's opening scenes. I do not know why it is called Undefeated because the Tigers lose their first game of the season before they start their run for the playoffs. There are some very strong scenes though, especially one with Money and some news he receives about his future and a scene between Coach and O.C. as they say goodbye to each other at the end of the season.

Undefeated is a very effective sports documentary but I am surprised it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Its nomination was deserved but it is not consistently strong and felt throughout its entire length. However, I encourage you sports fans out there to go see a real football team instead of one created for you with a Hollywood cast; these kids are much more worth your time.