The Saturday Night the Lights Went Out

At the rate Hollywood’s been cranking them out you’d think inspirational sports movies were as cheap to make and as assured of profit as horror flicks.

'Hey bro, I think those cheerleaders are checkin' us out!'

“This is a true story,” the first frames proclaim. Because it’s set in the recent past that’s your clue that they’re going to honor the people portrayed – or their memory – and there won’t be any conflict worth a fig.

This is the story of the Saturday night the lights went out at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Returning home from losing to East Carolina State on November 14, 1970, the football team’s plane crashed, killing most of the players and coaches along with boosters and the school’s athletic director – 75 people in all.

A two-hour eulogy, the movie is about how the school rebuilt the "Thundering Herd" over the next year and how various individuals got on with their lives. Always sincere, maudlin or both, it doesn’t so much inspire as wear the viewer down.

Football fans, other than Marshall alumni, will be disappointed because there’s no gridiron action for the first 75 minutes, and after a few snippets it’s another half-hour until the Big Game, one of two that season they could use to end the film on an upbeat note.

After the crash university president Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) considers suspending the football program indefinitely. He’s supported in this by Paul Griffen (Ian McShane), the father of one of the players, who wants the world to stop because his son died. Griffin also refuses to take back the engagement ring of his son’s fiancée, Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara), making her wear it instead of getting on with her life.

Surviving player Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie) rallies the town to force Dedmon to keep football alive at Marshall. First he needs a coach. Assistant coach Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), who didn’t take the plane, doesn't want the job. Nor does anyone else, it seems, until Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) applies for it.

With most of their older players gone, Jack, who speaks in folksy metaphors, petitions the NCAA to suspend a rule and allow Marshall to use freshmen on their team.

It takes half an hour of screen time to get to the decision to play and another half-hour to recruit coaches and players. Then there’s 15 minutes of training and strategizing before, ten months after the plane crash, “the Young Thundering Herd” takes the field. It will be years before they can win games consistently, but at this point just playing is enough.

Director McG (Charlie’s Angels) doesn’t bring much excitement to the story, with its obligatory subplots about each character. We see at the end that Marshall University already has a memorial to the people who died in the plane crash, so this movie is superfluous.

Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper.