Didn't do justice to the real story. Star vehicle for Matthew M...

Rating: 7/10 (11 April 2007)

I was there, I lived it. I lost friends. A lot of this film was manufactured for dramatic effect, I'm sure, and that's okay. There were some touching moments and some scenes brought back memories. But Warner Bros fumbled overall, I think, making it just another inspirational popcorn movie. Certainly Jack Lengyel was nothing like the guy Matthew portrayed in my memory,(although as an actor I enjoy his work - Matthew's, not Jack's), nor did Lengyel or any of the others dress in that goofy looking polyester. I remember them in green MU dress jackets and nice clothes. Huntington, West Virginia is and was a beautiful city, Marshall is a great university, and the people who died on that rainy night and those brave kids who followed them to re-build the Herd deserved better representation on the big screen. Nobody wants to see people suffer, and seeing a city shrouded in mourning all through the holidays and for months afterward probably wouldn't sell tickets, but that's the way it was. I just wish the producers would have filmed a better story, focusing on more than the Lengyel angle. That entire city and university rose from the ashes, and that was the greater story, believe me. More than anything in the film, the reality of that year showed the quiet strength of a shattered community brought together through tragedy and grief, who re-built from scratch something they had always held in high esteem. And when each little step of that goal was reached, we never forgot those we lost, and as important as, "We Are Marshall", became later on, we also said a silent prayer - "God Bless the 75".