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Invincible September 4, 2006 |
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As much as I hate to admit to falling for the oldest cinematic feel good trick in the book, there’s no way to deny the fact that when an underdog makes good on an impossible dream, gets into the big game and make a big play, it’s pure formulaic magic. Maybe there’s a part in everyone, especially small town film critics sitting alone in an empty theater on an August afternoon, that imagines themselves as Rocky Balboa, crawling his way up from the gutter to fight for the heavyweight title, or that little sparkplug Rudy, the world’s biggest Notre Dame booster who saw his way onto the field for the last play of a particularly dismal season, or, as in the most recent uplifting sports drama, “Invincible”, as ‘70’s Philadelphia bartender Vince Papale, a 30-year-old former high school baller who somehow made the Eagles squad after new coach Dick Vermeil held open tryouts for the average Philadelphian Pete Punchclock. I guess it’s the American Dream, or a silly Cinderella style version of it, when the odds are broken and an insignificant speck on the lower totem pole of society’s hierarchal structure is given a spot usually reserved for hot shot athletes and highly touted collegiate recruits, but whatever you want to label it, a miraculous fluke or the iron willed determination of a broken man trying to prove himself worthy to his doubters, and himself, it makes for entertaining movie watching, and prime escapism. Who knows, maybe after another pathetic sub .500 season of misery the Bills will hold open tryouts for Western New York’s working class dreamers with the notion that it worked well in the movies, and once in the mid ‘70’s, so it’s gotta work again sometime. If not, well, the movie will be out on DVD in six months, the Bills will probably finish 6-10, if we’re lucky, and the hopes of local sports fans, and hardcore dreamers alike, will have to subside back to fiction, where something like “Invincible” can rightfully earn it’s spot next to “Rocky”, “The Rookie”, and “Cinderella Man” on your shelf of melodramatic All American male weepers. Like “Cinderella Man”, and especially “Rocky”, with it’s Southside Philly locales and numerous street running training montages, “Invincible” has the benefit of the working class proletariat at its focus, a subsection of society that plays particularly well on movie screens where the general audience is not too removed from its hero. Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) is in bad shape in the summer of ’76; his wife has just left him, he’s been laid off from his substitute teaching gig, he can’t pay the rent on the apartment he recently trashed with the pots and pans of his runaway spouse, his part time job at a local booze dive is only slightly fulfilling, surrounded by a pack of friends equally downtrodden from a bitter workers strike at a local Westinghouse plant (like “Entourage’s” Vince Chase, Papale is, in the end, just one of the homeboys from around the block), and his main mode of entertainment is a weekly mudball game in a back lot with some local yahoos that he routinely destroys with his speed and agility. To make matters worse, his beloved Eagles are the worst team in the league, with no hope in sight for a quick turnaround, so when former collegiate coach Dick “Wet Eyes” Vermeil (Greg Kinnear) is hired and immediately stuns local sportscasters with his open tryout stunt, Vince’s buddies all suggest he participate, after all, he’s the best athlete in their home ring game, and God knows the hapless Eagles could use a few good runners on their Special Teams unit. But Vince is skeptical, and nervous, “There’s a difference between Mean Joe Greene and Joey from the tanker, you know?” His skepticism, a natural trait in anybody who has suffered as many bad beats as he, and his South Philly brethren, has in the previous year, is dramatic fodder that only makes the eventual triumph all the more sweeter, and the film does a good enough job at making Vince’s surroundings just bleak and desperate enough to warrant that hangdog defeatist air that Wahlberg seems to emote with his brooding acting style, before the big moments turn it into energetic celebration, and grade A hokum, of the best kind. There’s nothing especially new about the way the film unfolds that will surprise you, I mean if you’ve seen “Rudy” this is basically the same thing NFL style, with the Philadelphia Eagles in place of Notre Dame (and Mark Wahlberg in place of the more likable Sean Astin), but the director, Erickson Core, who also served as cinematographer, has enough cinematic tricks up his sleeves, and enough standard ‘70’s rock ‘n’ roll songs on his soundtrack (Jim Croche’s “I Got a Name” is a perfect credits opener, while Edgar Winter’s “Free Ride” and Canned Heat’s “Let’s Work Together” provide added oomph during the impressive football scenes) to make the clichés and familiarity forgivable. With football season upon us, there’s nothing like an old fashioned, feel good, working class pigskin yarn to get the blood flowing, and though it’s not as touching as “Rocky” or “Rudy”, as brilliantly gritty and deep as “Friday Night Lights”, or as heartwarmingly special as this year’s best underdog story “Akeelah and the Bee”, I still see nothing wrong with standing up and cheering for Vince Papale and his movie friendly journey from Larry Lunchbox to the National Football League. “Invincible” is playing at the Movieplex 59.
by Adam Suraf |