A Good, Really Good Feel-Good Movie

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2015)

This is based upon a true story.
Jim White (Kevin Costner) gets a teaching job in McFarland, California after having his troubles at other schools. At his last job, he got fired for throwing a football shoe at the captain of the football team and blood was drawn. He goes to McFarland, CA where he institutes a Cross County program in 1987. He did this after having some difficulty with the McFarland Head Football Coach.
The movie makes it like you see above, but in reality Disney doesn't tell us that Jim White was teaching at McFarland for about 10-years before doing the Cross Country program. Also, in reality Jim White had 3-daughters, not two as seen in the movie and some of them had already graduated college by 1987. Everything else seems to be okay though. Well, almost as McFarland was mostly white not Latino, but Disney (again) makes McFarland mostly Latino. Oh, one more thing, the eldest daughter, Julie, didn't have a thing with Thomas (Carlos Pratts) one of the runners. Yes, Disney again.
Okay all that aside this is a good, really good feel- good movie. Jim White did do the Cross Country program and did very well. We see the problem he has with his runners who also worked the fields with their parents and worked out a schedule so that they could practice running and still help the parents. Jim White even goes picking one day to really appreciate what his runners go through on a daily basis and admits later on that was one of the worst days in his life.
We see tension at times when the family first moves to McFarland and also during the meets.
What makes this a good movie are the pep talks Jim White gives to his runners to make them understand what is really happening and how they can succeed going against other all-white schools whose runners have all the social and educational advantages they do not have.
One good line happens when Thomas asks a runner from an all-white school – just before a race - "Do you play golf?" and the runner says he does. Thomas then says, "This isn't golf."
Costner shines as do his runners who tow the mark and are very respectful. It takes some time before they call him "Coach" instead of "white" and not a reference to his name. See? Maria Bello is good as Cheryl, Jim's wife.
At the end of the movie we see the real Jim White and those runners (now adults) and what happened to them and we also see how McFarland did in the Cross Country Program for a number of years since 1987.
(7/10)
Violence: Not really. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.