Rating: B-
There’s a safe familiarity of the sports movie that’s as difficult to resist for audiences as it is hard to overcome for filmmakers. The basics of the plot are so well-established that one can almost predict the specific beats of the story before one even sits down to watch it. In a way, that makes the sports movie something like your favorite dish your mom used to make; it either comforts you or your too tired of it to enjoy it anymore.
So how does one judge a film that is so familiar that you almost feel as though you’ve seen it a thousand times before? Does it do to say that the performances were good? That’s certainly true of 12 Mighty Orphans. The cast, led by Luke Wilson, is truly superb, bringing their all in an effort to elevate the familiar to something worth watching. Or maybe it’s the basis of the story itself. Since the themes of sports movies don’t tend to change from movie to movie, perhaps it’s best to look at what the story is.
Certainly, the story of 12 Mighty Orphans is one worth knowing, even for non-sports fans such as myself. It follows the true tale of the football team for the Masonic Home, an orphanage in Ft. Worth, Texas. During the Great Depression, the home hired Coach Rusty Russell (Wilson) to start a football team for the boys who lived at the home and attended its school. What follows is your typical started-with-nothin’ sports story that eventually finds the troubled, angry, dirt poor squad reaching deep into themselves and pulling out what everyone thought was impossible.
The background story is truly marvelous. While the IRL events of the movie transpired over several years, 12 Mighty Orphans condenses the narrative into a single season of Texas high school football—the power of which is hard to overstate and perhaps harder to understand for those who live outside of Texas. The Mighty Mites, as the team came to be called, went on to capture the heart of the nation at a time when so many needed an underdog to root for. Members of the team eventually went on to play professionally, including Hardy Brown (Jake Austin Walker), who played for the Colts, the 49ers, and the Broncos.
While some of the circumstances of the real story have been changed for dramatic purposes, 12 Mighty Orphans does manage to capture the inherent greatness of its source story. Director Ty Roberts, a Midland, Texas native, guides the film with a careful hand, allowing audiences to come to know the story with a kind of adoration those outside of Texas might not get at first. Being from Midland, the setting for the book, the movie, and the TV series Friday Night Lights, one can assume Roberts knows a thing or two about the weight high school football has on the consciousness of Texans.
Wilson, a perennially underrated actor, delivers a solid performance as Russell. True to the character, he’s essentially the tough-but-fair father figure the boys of the team need. One part advocate, one part teacher, and one part dad, Wilson displays the hallmarks of a stern Texas “pa” while allowing room for his boys to fail and learn in the process. He’s helped by Martin Sheen, who portrays the home’s resident doctor, Doc Hall.
Though all the ingredients are in place for a film that could just ooze with sap and sentiment, somehow Roberts and co overcome the trappings to a produce a film that is as uplifting as it is predictable. Perhaps the film itself won’t go down as one of the best sports movies ever produced—it’s not even the best football movie—but the story itself is one that should be known and recognized outside of Texas and among the wider world of sports. And it is nice to have a solid feel-good movie to watch in these uncertain times. Perhaps the lessons of the Mighty Mites aren’t as far as they my seem. It never hurts to have hope, and it never hurts to try.
12 Mighty Orphans is now playing in theaters everywhere.
