Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - I was a little leery to see We Are Marshall. Don't get me wrong, I love football. We're a football family, as my husband coaches in and runs a kids' football organization, my son plays, and my daughter cheerleads. Yet, I think some of the best football movies ever have already been made. My husband plays his Remember the Titans DVD to get him ready for the games each week, and I still can't make it through the entire movie without crying. My son wants to go to Notre Dame solely because of watching Rudy, and I grew up in Chicago, and Brian's Song is a movie that's hard to beat around these parts. This was the only movie the six of us could agree on today, though, as I took my kids, and joined my good friend and her two kids.

What we found with We Are Marshall is a movie that not only could inspire like the other three movies, but had the heart of all of them put together. As an added bonus, it had plenty of humor as well, something the other three may have had occasionally, but not on a continual basis. Of course, some of the humor resulted in the bizarre outfits that Matthew McConaughey was donning. I realize it was the 70s and all and that accounted for the plaid pants, but his clothes were really out there.

With Remember the Titans and Brian's Song, the tragedies came at the end of the movie, but with We Are Marshall, the tragedy was at the beginning. The entire Marshall University football team, including coaches and boosters, were flying to a game, and sadly, the plane went down shortly after takeoff, and burst into flames, killing all seventy-five onboard. The movie is built around the people left behind, including fiances, parents, and children.

Four players are also left behind, some that are injured, and another that overslept and missed the flight. One of them, played by Anthony Mackie, feels that all his departed friends are counting on him to carry on. When he's told Marshall will honor his scholarship, but the football program is being discontinued, he simply won't accept it. He is able to convince the school to carry on the football tradition, but the president, played by David Straithairn, has no idea where to start, being he's not a football fan, and his athletic director perished in the plane crash as well.

Straithairn asks the only coach that survived, Matthew Fox, to take over, but the guilt just won't allow him to do it, as he prefers to continue building a new shed. None of the other football coaches out there, with some type of tie to Marshall, will agree to take on such a tough job. One coach, currently coaching at a small college, calls and offers up his services to Straithairn: Matthew McConaughey. He shows the president how good of a coach he could be, by having his son carry a football and run head first into a tree. He explains that he placed that call to him thinking how much pain the town must be in, and how he wants to help, leaving Straithairn with no choice but to hire him.

Although Straithairn is won over, not everyone is. A father, played by Ian McShane, lost his son in the crash, and a few years earlier had lost his wife. His whole life is gone, and he can't stand to be around the constant reminders, including the coffee shop he frequents every day. Complicating all of it for him, is the fact his son's fiance works at the coffee shop, and all he sees every time he looks at her are his losses.

McConaughey works hard to win them all over, using odd references to make his point, such as telling Straigthairn his son crapped his pants the day before, but he changed the diaper (which he'd never done before) proving there's a first time for everything, and that's why he was sure they could get this team going again. He also admits he gets his methods of remembering people's names from tips he's read in Redbook.

Climbing to the top of the work-in-progress shed, eventually McConaughey convinces Fox to join his coaching staff, and through his football knowledge and humor, but mostly with his heart, he wins the town over as well. When he has a hard time finding players for his team, he looks beyond classic football players, and turns to a group of like-minded young men whose only common quality is heart. What the team and the entire town learns from their new coach is that no matter how difficult it is, you have to move on. It's the best way to honor those that you lost.

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