We Are Marshall

An account of what followed a plane crash on 14 November 1970. The aircraft carrying Marshall University's football team came down on the way back from an away game. Players, coaches, university staff and supporters were killed; the toll passed seventy. For the town of Huntington in West Virginia this was not the loss of a team but of the town itself. The film concentrates on the following season. The university considers shutting the programme down, the students object, and an outside coach, Jack Lengyel, arrives to build a team from nothing. He has no experienced players; the squad is assembled largely from new students and people who have never played. The question at the centre is not winning games but whether beginning again in the middle of grief is possible. Matthew McConaughey plays Lengyel and Matthew Fox plays Red Dawson, the assistant coach who survived. McG directed. An emotional and well-made example for anyone who likes sports drama drawn from record. For a viewer looking for restraint, the film steers feeling openly and the score makes no secret of it.