Undefeated

Oscar-award winning documentary "Undefeated" maximizes it out-take from being at the right place at the right time. The movies focuses its attention on a failing high-school American football team Manassas Tigers in Memphis, Tennessee, yet to ever win a play-off game in the rich 110 years of existence. The Manassas high-school is located in an all-black neighborhood suffering from extreme unemployment rates after the closure of the local Bridgestone plant. Most children lack parental guidance, whilst being raised by grandmothers or single parents is an all-too-familiar sight. In one reveal almost everyone in the team has close relatives convicted of various sorts of crimes with some of the most aggressive youths, like Chavis Daniels, already having spent time in correctional facilities. Into this backdrop of dire hopelessness comes Bill Courtney, a successful businessman, whose true calling and passion is coaching football teams. Having offered six years of his time on pro-bono formation of Manassas Tigers, this year is supposed to be his swansong. His key weapon is the brute force of O.C. Brown, the most talented player on the team, however his educational struggles pose question as to whether he will be able to continue to college with his education. Meanwhile miniscule right-back Montrail 'Money' Brown, a well-versed and perspective youth, hopes to finish his career in football (as being too small to succeed in pro gaming) on a high. Will the school be able to break the 110 year play-off jinx?

Molded into the all too familiar underdog sports story of a team of misfits conquering the odds, it is easy to understand the Academy's decision. Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin spent a significant amount of time filming the ordeals of Bill Courtney and his challenged youth team, capturing a spectacular moment in time, when the group turn from perennial whooping boys into the dominant regional outfit with a knack for big comebacks.

Given this extraordinary backdrop the film directors come off with rich material to form a documentary. Even though the ease in which the story fits the mold of narrative genre films feels somewhat suspect and forced at times, the viewing is really pleasurable. Plus, despite everything else you know this is real life and although the directors hint at outcomes along the way, you never truly know what will happen, giving it a unique, engaging quality, so desperately lacking in features. Full of heart, passion and a hopeful outlook this really does seem like the kind of stuff the Academy would go for. Worthwhile watch, even if the year in question had superior documentaries to choose from.

Sometimes you start a project with a different goal than it eventually ends up to. The filmmakers hit the Jackpot in more than one sense here. On the other hand winning the Oscar might have raised the bar/expectations from people who might have watched this as a normal documentary and therefor might have liked it more.

This documentary sometimes might feel like it lacks the drive Hollywood movies have. But that is because it is real and because everything you see in here is what happened. It still is dramatized, but not to the extent you see in the movies. You also shouldn't forget, that those are not actors, but real people (and please don't confuse real people with "reality TV") doing their thing. The camera is not distracting and the tension is felt throughout.

One really good sport documentary

It has become a new thing of amusement for sports fans to research old rants of coaches, particularly football coaches, that they gave in a live press conference while currently in the heat of the moment. Quite possibly the most iconic was the professional and motivating Herm Edwards sending a message to his players saying, "you play to win the game" after Herm's New York Jets lost to the Cleveland Browns in 2002. The rant I thought of during Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin's documentary Undefeated was Jim Mora's "Playoffs?!" remake when asked about the Colts' future after a devastating loss. "I just hope we can win a game!" he stated shortly after.

It's that kind of mentality I feel that the Manassas High School football team and their long-suffering coach, Bill Courtney occupied for a long, long time, as the school's team, which existed for 110 years, never won a playoff game and have become the devastating team that you look on the schedule and cite as an easy win if you play them. The school is located in Manassas, Virginia, and is grossly underfunded, along with possessing an athletic program unfit for even a third-rate school. The kids need to get by with what they have, and that's not much. Coming from a prestigious and often highly-regarded public high school, I look on with great sympathy and possess deep gratefulness in what I was born into.

Undefeated primarily focuses on Manassas High School football team's 2009 year, where they plan to turn things around for the better (not like they could get any worse). They figure that since they're at rock bottom, they can only go up from there, and Bill Courtney plans to turn the team around, putting heavy emphasis on character and frequently telling them, "character is not how you handle successes, because anyone can bask in the glory of a win, but how you handle failures," and that is a bold and admirable message for an unpaid coach to tell his players. He believes in them, even when their previous record was 0-10. You won't find too many high school coaches who take the game as seriously as Courtney, or are prepared to give them advice they can use off the field or when they hang up their jerseys and helmets to pursue other things.

Courtney explains that the school is so underfunded athletically that they considered taking part in "pay games," which involves the team traveling miles across the state to face a team they have no chance in beating and accepting a $3,000 - $4,000 in exchange for brutal humiliation. When your only option to get money is to belittle your self-esteem, you really need help in some way, shape, or form. He even goes on to say that the reputation the football team gets is so putrid, ugly, and dehumanizing that athletes that come to Manassas High from eight grade don't even consider playing for the team. Can you blame them? Yet not only are they out of an extra-curricular activity in their high school career, they're almost completely out of a future career with football.

Thankfully, Courtney has a reliable lineup, involving O.C. Brown, a senior whose passion is more suited for the field than the classroom, the quick and dependable Montrail "Money" Brown, and a man by the name of Chavis Daniels, who is the team goon, often causing trouble and possessing a very suspicious anger problem. Courtney accepts the challenge with no regret at all, and often connects personally with many of his players. There's a touching scene in the latter half when O.C. and Courtney are traveling somewhere in a car together when O.C. tells the coach that he is attracted to another girl. As a result, Courtney hands over a small bottle of cologne telling him to use it conservatively and he will get all the ladies he wants. The warm, innocuous, yet comforting feeling of bonding goes right to the viewer's heart in just a wonderful scene.

The film chronicles the 2009 season, showing modest beginnings, but a wonderfully unbelievable conclusion with opportunities soaring for the team, players, and school. We also see how the players not only adapt to the new opportunities, but also the inevitable ones, like college approaching their line of vision and high school entering their rear-view mirror. Courtney devastatingly explains that once the football season ends, some kids recognize that they have a 2.0 grade point average, a 14 on their ACT, and no scholarship, resulting in almost nowhere to go. It's a depressing state of affairs, especially for kids who have no other experience other than the kind they obtained on the field.

Undefeated is a nicely made documentary that had the honor of beating Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory at the 2012 Oscars for Best Documentary Feature. The film will without a doubt will strike an emotional chord for some audiences, yet despite being a true story, there's something about hearing the perfunctory tale of a coach turning a ragtag bunch of half-wits into a winning team, real or not, that feels sort of artificial. Yet there is a divine humanity in this story that isn't ignored, and the result, in the long run, was a long-overdue one Manassas will cherish for another 110 years. It's light years more efficient than a cliché-ridden tale like Rudy, I suppose.

NOTE: Undefeated will see a DVD/Blu-Ray release on February 19, 2013, but is currently on several video on demand outlets and on DirecTV's Pay-Per View feature.

Starring: Bill Courtney, O.C. Brown, Montrail "Money" Brown, and Chavis Daniels. Directed by: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin.

Great movie worth seeing. The overall rating is far too low for this movie- don't be discouraged from seeing it.

Life isn't easy and some kids learn this from their earliest days. 'Undefeated' gives us heart that some will escape the hard life of poverty they have been dealt. One coach steps in to try his best to do his part to help but the job is tough and full of harsh realities... not everything has a storybook ending in this movie or in real life. Still the movie has plenty of feel good moments, moments when you hope the kids are starting to see the light of their own potential both on and off the field.

Have your teenagers and college kids see this movie. They'll appreciate you and what they have been blessed with a little more because of what they see others go through in this documentary.

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.