My All American

Freddie Steinmark is a small, fast, stubborn footballer. The big universities do not want him; in the end he takes a scholarship at the University of Texas and finds a place in Darrell Royal's team. In the 1969 season the team goes for the championship. At the end of it the reason for the pain in his leg becomes clear: bone cancer. Angelo Pizzo writes and directs. Finn Wittrock plays Freddie and Aaron Eckhart plays Royal. The story is real. Steinmark played for Texas in 1969, was diagnosed that year and had the leg amputated; he died in 1971 at twenty two. Angelo Pizzo is a known writer of American sports films; Hoosiers and Rudy are his, and this is the first he directed. He uses the same template. The best passages are off the field. The relationship between coach and player and the hospital scenes are more concrete than the games. America at the end of the sixties sits behind it and the film does not go there; Vietnam and the campus protests pass in a few shots. The narrative is entirely predictable and the emotional pitch is high; the ending sets out deliberately to make you cry. Who it is for: viewers who like American football films and sports drama drawn from real events. Who it is not for: the template is familiar, the characters are one dimensional, and the film is nowhere critical.