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McFarland, USA (2015), PG, ★★★

Kevin Costner and his cross-country team. 
Sports movies. Are they exciting anymore? Well, of course, they are exciting but it depends on how the story revolves around the event and the team's uphill battle to victory and also how the main characters and the characters on the team develop and whether or not they are memorable in the end, especially Disney's sports movies. They are all almost the same but I have enjoyed most of them: Remember The Titans, Miracle, The Rookie, Glory Road. Even though they are all conventional at times, we just witness all of them in some detail. My personal favorite is Miracle and Titans is a real close second. They have almost cover every sport except cross-country or track that which they call it in the movie and this movie just does not cover the sport itself but also the characters' lives with great perspective.

In the year, 1987, Jim White (Kevin Costner) is fired for chastising one of his players by accidentally throwing a shoe at a locker and ricocheting to hit a football player's cheek. Following that incident, Jim moves away with his wife, Cheryl (Maria Bello) and their two daughters, Julie and Jamie (Morgan Saylor and Elsie Fisher). They settle down in McFarland, California which is a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. They slowly get accustomed to the unpredictable lifestyle.

Jim is now a life science teacher/PE and football coach assistant and meets with Principal Camillo (Valente Rodriguez) to start at the new school. As he coaches the football team, he starts out poorly as the football team during a game loss of an embarrassing 63-0. Later, as the football coach complains to Camillo, he is sent on to the bleachers and when he sees two boys, Victor and Johnny run real fast, he has an idea. He convinces Camillo to start a track team and he recruits some guys including the Diaz brothers - Danny, Damacio and David (Ramiro Rodriguez, Michael Aguero and Rafael Martinez) to start a team. They start on a journey with struggles, hardship, sacrifice and ultimately, victory.

Jim and his family.
I went to this movie with surprisingly dire expectations and in the end, I liked this movie because even though it was conventional for most of the film, it is a winning film but with heart and realism. Unlike most of the Disney sports movies, we get to know some of the team characters and what their background is and also their working and living conditions. It is a great outlook, which is the strongest aspect of the movie, of how the Hispanic community and the white community clash to see how different the cultures are in terms of family, celebration and work ethic. It is refreshing.

Kevin Costner has been on a surprising roll with very good performances with Man of Steel, Draft Day, the sometimes-strong but over-dramatic Black or White, and now this movie: he is been quietly on the radar with one good subtle performance after another and I think, in my opinion, he is resurrecting himself from the grave. If he gets cast in not in a safe film but an ambitious one, look out for Costner. But, it is not just Costner's film, it is also the cross-country characters' film as we see the positive and negative aspects of the Hispanic community and also their personal stories which are interesting. Some scenes go into conventional and murky sentiment but we root for them no matter what. Maria Bello, unfortunately, is underused as the one-dimensional wife who has to encourage Jim not to take the job and stay behind with his fellow teammates.

No matter, this is a winning and touching "based-on-a-true story" movie that pushes the same formulaic buttons but they touch them in a more unpredictable way as we see the characters' souls being poured in onto the cabbage fields and on the bus rides and during the racing scenes. There's also a touching scene where the people in town organizes a girl's 15th birthday and turn it into a quinceañera. It is not just a sports movie but it is a character-driven movie about the foundation of a community and also cross-country itself and director Niki Caro deserves the credit for this movie. It is a solid sports movie in a canon of Disney sports films. Don't miss it!

***

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