The Director Rod Lurie Has Had an Eclectic Career That Often Tilts Toward the Dark Side-He has made films about the Nitty-Gritty of Politics (“Nothing But the Truth,” “The Contender”), He Did the remake of “Straw Dogs,” and He Reached a New Peak of Artry with “The Outpost” (2019), in which he drew on his experience as a combat veteran to craft a staggeringly authentic war movie about the conflict in Afghanistan.
Given these history, it is a surprise to see Lurie achieve a denominational football drama which fired by the heart released by Angel Studios. “The Senior” is an overview of the direct line in a direct line which was shaped in a tale of true fairy: the story of Mike Flynt, who in 2007 joined his former college football team from West Texas at the age of 59. Yet it is a effective Sweet-by-free heart painting TV-TV
Michael Chiklis, resembling Joe Rogan in about 10 years, plays Flynt with the heart and soul of a hard plush bear, and although the film is shameless manipulative (just like each film published by Angel Studios), “The Senior” wins his pieces by throat with his songs on the ground. After Flynt joined his former team, one of the coaches even said: “He is like a 59 -year -old Rudy!” Who nails him more or less. “The Senior” is one of those sporting films based on a real story that looks more like a film than most of the invented sports films.
When I grew up, one of my favorite books – I read it again and again – was “Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer”. It was an overview of the 1967 season of Green Bay Packers, as Jerry Kramer tells, the right guard of the packers who told the incredibly punished discipline to be trained by Vince Lombardi, who led the packers training camp as a cross between a drilling sergeant and a goalkeeper in Abu Ghraib. What surprised me about the book was the way it was pain in pain and faith: to be an NFL line player was about as murderous an event that we could imagine, but the players shared a reverence; Before each match, they prayed. While Kramer captured it, their agony of bone and muscle typing, such as Lombardi coaching, was part of a higher vocation.
“The Senior”, too, is a film that locates this place in football where rehabilitation meets Rest. The opening of half an hour is sketches in the background, which seems almost too absurd to believe (although this has really happened, so we drive with it). The film returned to 1970, when Flynt (played in the first stages of Shawn Patrick Clifford) is the secondary school and the captain of the Lobos, the university team of the State University of Sull Ross. He is a leader with a vice: he likes to fight … too much. In fact, his need for punches takes him out of school.
Cut at 37 years later. Mike, now played with a friendly look by the bald chiklis and cut in the barrel, is a foreman of the construction site, married for decades in Eileen (Mary Stuart Masterson), with several adult children. He’s fine. But he is haunted by his intimidator of a father (a lot of papa flashbacks teacher to the young Mike how to fight by calling him a “little run” and by hitting him in the face), and when it comes to his own college instructor, Micah (Brandon Flynn), he is less a parent of support than a narcissus to support his feet.
It is a 35 -year -old college meeting that brings Mike together with his former teammates, where the Kooking idea presents he could really join the team because he has never finished his last year. Shouldn’t the film do much in technical details (should it not reapplicate in college?); He cuts straight to the coach, Sam Weston (Rob Corddry), dealing with Mike’s attempt to try for the team like the joke she must be. But Mike, who has kept his combat energy, wants it to be a kind of metaphor for life. If he can play university football again, then he can heal the past.
“The Senior” is a monumentally conventional and healthy film, full of montages and training scenes where Mike, who likes to play “The Rubberband Man” by the spinners in his helmet, confronts his new multi-racial team of riverbones and amateur spine, only to discover that they are especially cool about the man they call “Fred Flontsone” and “Pops”. “The real Mike Flynt has a drawing in Texas, which I wished in a way that Chiklis had adopted. However, he makes Mike a thorny and devoted paangon for which you cannot prevent yourself from rooting.
Mike does the team, but not as a departure player. Once the season at the start, the question becomes: will it be allowed to play in a match? Or the fear that he will break his neck or paralyze his body will keep it on the sidelines? (But if this anxiety is there, why did the coach leave him in the team in the first place? Oh, too bad.) Mary Stuart Masterson is excellent as a wife of the house who decides to stay next to Mike, even if she recognizes that he is putting through a version of the Texas-Football of therapy. And Chiklis is physically convincing – an aging bull who always knows how to move – as well as emotionally convincing, especially when he put the task of delivering the speech from the hellbent / Kick -Ass / inspirational locker room.
Mike discovers that his dark father has kept an album of his son’s sports clippings, and that he also kept a bible, inscribed with the words “Lord, give me the strength to forgive others. And myself ”. If you think about it, it is the inscription of a sociopath, but not Nitpick: the Angel Studios brand needs an injection of religious piety. Since the time of Jerry Kramer, it has been axiomatic that football and faith go together, and “The Senior” transforms this into a film formula that works.
