A Revealing Look At Football

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 2019)

15 July 2013. This biographical portrayal of Vince Papale, a 30-year-old bartender (played by Mark Wahlberg) from South Philadelphia who tried out for NFL's Philadelphia Eagles in 1976 is perhaps remarkable not for the ironically "good" under-spirited acting, but for the scriptwriting, directing and editing. While Wahlberg performed decently, what made this movie special wasn't the dramatic performances so much as the more difficult underplaying of the usual stereotypical and hyped up action and melodrama in typical sports movies or for that matter most dramatic features. This movie never went over the top, Wahlberg's sports actions didn't excessively eclipse that of the rest of the Eagle's plays. And even the script brought out the more elusive underlying sociological underpinnings of the game of football often missed in most team sports movies. The potential romantic subplot was restrained and more authentic and supportive, not intrusive, the father-son relationship was made into an antagonistic sideshow, nor the coach-player relationship wasn't made into some warm and fuzzy mentor character sideline. Instead, Invincible focused on the personal and intimate struggle of overcoming a socially derived fatalistic and damning self-image as well as the social connections in a tightly knitted community.
Robert Redford's The Natural (1984) was as much about his romantic relationship and the political gamesmanship as it was about baseball, Micky Rourke's The Wrestler (2008) was more about the singular individual focus on redemption and coming back, Brad Pitt's Money Ball (2011) with its rich and more raw look at the big picture of baseball perhaps Invincible is more connected to Meg Ryan's Against the Ropes (2004) was more about overcoming the sexual discrimination of couching in a male dominated sport while Papale faced age discrimination and elitist snobbery of NFL draft requirements, or Shia LaBeouf's The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005) with an individualistic look at an amateur playing in the elite big league of golf at the turn of the century.