Undefeated

Undefeated which premiered at Austin's SXSW Film Festival this week fits into a long line of inspiring sports films. It is very much in the tradition of Steve James's Hoop Dreams in its exploration of the struggles of inner city African-American youths to overcome great odds using athletics as a means to escape poverty and deprivation. The filmmaker tells the story of Memphis's Manassas Tigers focusing in on the coach and three of his players as they attempt to produce a special season at a school that has had a long history of football futility. Coach Bill Courtney is an inspiring coach who devotes himself to this football team, even at a cost to the time he can spend with his own family. He makes the team into a family and focuses on character. He and his coaches go above-and-beyond the call of duty raising money for the team and making sure the students also focus on their academics. Despite the reality that the coaches are white and their students are black, issues of race seem to play very little role in their story.

The filmmakers tell the story in mostly chronological with no narration and only very limited input from outside observers. Perhaps the most remarkable element of the film is that the filmmakers were with the team for the entire season and were able to disappear into the background and become part of the team. In so doing, they were often able to capture real emotion and conflict that participants are often afraid to put on film. The honesty of the film is powerful. The music is excellent and complements the storytelling nicely. While Undefeated is powerful and inspiring, it is probably a little too long and could use some more editing.

Sometimes you start a project with a different goal than it eventually ends up to. The filmmakers hit the Jackpot in more than one sense here. On the other hand winning the Oscar might have raised the bar/expectations from people who might have watched this as a normal documentary and therefor might have liked it more.

This documentary sometimes might feel like it lacks the drive Hollywood movies have. But that is because it is real and because everything you see in here is what happened. It still is dramatized, but not to the extent you see in the movies. You also shouldn't forget, that those are not actors, but real people (and please don't confuse real people with "reality TV") doing their thing. The camera is not distracting and the tension is felt throughout.

One really good sport documentary

North Memphis looks rough. Its houses are collapsing, its public infrastructure is crumbling, and its prospects on the horizon look like its bringing more of the same. Undefeated says life in North Memphis was not always like this, but once the Firestone plant closed and took the jobs away, this part of the city was forgotten. The residents feel they are not only second class citizens in Tennessee, which focuses more on Nashville in the center and Knoxville in the east, but second class in their own city.

One bright spot is a brand new, state of the art high school; the new home of the Manassas Tigers. Entering Manassas High School, however, is more akin to going through airport security than going to a place to learn. During his first football meeting of the year with his team, Coach Bill Courtney mentions starting players getting shot, jail sentences, and academic suspensions, issues a coach may encounter throughout their entire career, but these are issues he has dealt with in the past two weeks. North Memphis is definitely not Dillon, Texas and Manassas High School resembles nothing of the Friday Night Lights Dillon Panthers; this is real life.

Coach Courtney spends the vast majority of his time preaching character, discipline, and respect to a crowd of high school kids who do not seem very interested in receiving those messages. They are more concerned with fighting amongst themselves than focusing on beating the other team on the football field. Instead of studying plays in film sessions or running through football fundamentals, Coach constantly has to break up fights, convince the kids not to drop out of school, and remind them that a man's character is revealed on the football field.

Incredibly, Coach is a volunteer. He does not get paid to spend grueling hours every day trying to teach football and life lessons to a bunch of kids who usually seem to be tuning him out. He sees something more in them though, much more than they see in themselves. He feels it in his bones that if these kids learn to focus on the team instead of themselves; they will not only win on the football field, but in the classroom, and later on in life. This sounds like a scripted TV show, but it is very real and Coach Courtney is dead serious about it.

One player who visibly understands the Coach's vision is also the team's best player, left tackle O.C. Brown. O.C. reminds you of Michael Oher from The Blind Side. He is a huge human being but has a quiet, almost meek, personality. He is not strong academically though and is having trouble getting the minimum score for college scholarship eligibility on the ACT. In one of the stronger episodes of the film, O.C. gets a one-on-one tutor and stays three to four nights a week at a coach's house because no tutors would ever go see O.C. in his home neighborhood. The filmmaker wisely includes social commentary about why it is always the gifted athletic star that gets so much specific help and never just a regular kid.

There are only two other members of the football team who get noticeable screen time and they are right tackle Montrail 'Money' Brown and team troublemaker Chavis Daniels. Money is under-sized for his position but plays with so much intensity that he is a very strong member of the offensive line. He has a 3.8 GPA and has his sights set on becoming a football manager or lawyer because he knows he is far too small for college ball. Chavis has just returned from school from a 15 month leave of absence because he was in juvenile detention. He has an incredibly short fuse and will instigate a fight in a moment's notice. The back and forth comparisons between Money and Chavis work to the film's credit. Money gets injured and wonders why he can barely get a second chance on the football field when he sees Chavis still causing trouble on the team even though he is on his 50th chance.

Through the unending and amazingly persistent efforts of Coach Courtney, the Manassas Tigers start winning games and the kids' conduct both on and off the field are noticeably improved from the film's opening scenes. I do not know why it is called Undefeated because the Tigers lose their first game of the season before they start their run for the playoffs. There are some very strong scenes though, especially one with Money and some news he receives about his future and a scene between Coach and O.C. as they say goodbye to each other at the end of the season.

Undefeated is a very effective sports documentary but I am surprised it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Its nomination was deserved but it is not consistently strong and felt throughout its entire length. However, I encourage you sports fans out there to go see a real football team instead of one created for you with a Hollywood cast; these kids are much more worth your time.

Most of us like an underdog story, and this 2012 Academy Awards Best Documentary feature has all the standard elements that make up an award winning one. Directed and photographed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Undefeated follows a season of high school football team in their quest to secure a berth in the playoffs, being led by volunteer coach Bill Courtney, who has given up tremendous time over the last six seasons to follow his passion, and becoming a much lauded figure in the school for his tough love ways to turn around wayward boys, and boys with potential, into team players.

"Football doesn't build character. Football reveals character" is Courtney's philosophical take- away, and much of this documentary is a testament to that. In following this particular season as produced for the film, the filmmakers probably didn't know how it would have turned out, and it's very much contrary to the title of the movie. Then again, we may not be referring to the scoreline and results of the season, but to the spirit of the team that Courtney had developed this particular system that's under the filmmaker's lens and scrutiny, and the drilling down to the more micro, and personal level, amongst a select group of players that were paid a special focus.

One of the arcs may seem a little bit like The Blind Side, where a giant of a player got to stay with one of the coaches for a little while, in order to get his academic grades back on track in order to qualify for college. A college sports career is almost a given for O.C. Brown, but to get there meant a decent academic score. With players who come from troubled backgrounds, there are no lack of contenders making up the subjects for the documentary, especially amongst a large football team, and it goes to show how challenging a coach's job is in order to keep track of the team's progress in the game, the training, and the managing of plenty of egos, especially that of a hot head who just got released from junior penitentiary, and looks set to disrupt team dynamics.

And precisely why this documentary turned out a winner, is the very presence of Bill Courtney, and his story. Owner of a lumber business, he had sacrificed family time for game time to pursue his passion for coaching in a school that doesn't have a remarkable history in the game, and it is his unrelenting belief, and methods, that really made Undefeated engaging, rich, and moving, especially when doing so without much concrete rewards for six years. It is the crossroads he is in now, having to measure time spent with the school players, and that of his own children, that is niggling at the back of his mind, especially so when the team he has at his disposal this year has shown some remarkable progress. It's real family versus adopted family, and it's indeed cruel, yet inevitable in having presented no real choice where one's priorities should reside in.

Told in chronological order with plenty of games highlighted, each that will make you continuously root for the players and coaches we've grown accustomed to, this sports documentary covers a broad spectrum of the game, and the people behind the game. Yet it has plenty of soul in tackling the different story arcs amongst the people, that makes it a lot more powerful, rather than being just another sports movie that countless of Hollywood products have been produced, that tells of similarly inspiring, or heartwarming stories about superb coaches, and underdog teams making it good.

At the end of the day, what matters are the relationships that we forge, and probably the value and legacy we leave behind, that matters more than fleeting results. As Bill Courtney puts it, the measure of a man is not when he wins, but when he is defeated, and his reaction to that defeat, that matters the most. Recommended!

Great movie worth seeing. The overall rating is far too low for this movie- don't be discouraged from seeing it.

Life isn't easy and some kids learn this from their earliest days. 'Undefeated' gives us heart that some will escape the hard life of poverty they have been dealt. One coach steps in to try his best to do his part to help but the job is tough and full of harsh realities... not everything has a storybook ending in this movie or in real life. Still the movie has plenty of feel good moments, moments when you hope the kids are starting to see the light of their own potential both on and off the field.

Have your teenagers and college kids see this movie. They'll appreciate you and what they have been blessed with a little more because of what they see others go through in this documentary.