It's been a fine year for documentaries, and here's another good one, winner of the audience award for documentaries at this year's Sundance festival. The subject is the US Quadriplegic Rugby Team and its quest for gold at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens.
Quadriplegic rugby, affectionately known as "murderball," is played in specially armored wheelchairs on a regulation basketball court. It's a full-contact sport, and these men crash their chairs into one another at high speeds; it's not at all unusual to see chairs topple over.
The movie opens at the 2002 world championships, and sets up the strong rivalry between the teams from the US and Canada. Joe Soares, one of the movie's central figures, had been a star for the US until age caught up with him and he was cut from the team; feeling betrayed, he became the coach of the Canadian team, and it is his mission in life to defeat the US.
This is not a sentimental, heart-warming movie about men who need to be pitied; these are men who enjoy their sport, and their lives, to the fullest. The movie isn't shy about answering some of our more embarassing questions about quadriplegic life. Yes (for instance), they can still have sex, as they explain in one of the movie's funniest sequences.
That's not to say that they aren't inspiring figures. The movie takes some time away from the team to introduce us to Keith, who is still undergoing physical therapy after a recent motorcycle accident, and still adjusting to the idea of life in a wheelchair. When the team comes to visit his rehab center and give a demonstration, Keith is thrilled; he cruises through the halls in one of the rugby chairs with an enormous smile on his face, beginning to realize that there are still exciting things to do.
The movie is very well paced, and the personal stories give us something to root for on either side when the US and Canadian teams meet at the Paralympics. The matches are crisply edited; we get a real sense of the action of the game in a very short time.
Very funny, exciting, entertaining movie.
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