'McFarland, USA': Star Kevin Costner is excellent as a high school coach
鈥淢肠贵补谤濒补苍诲 USA鈥� is yet another movie about an underdog team and聽the underdog coach who rallies them to glory. The fact that it's based on a true story doesn't alter the fact that, like most such Hollywood movies, it seems fabricated.
Set in California鈥檚 Central Valley (home to many Mexican immigrants聽who toil in the fields), the movie is about Jim White (Kevin Costner), a football聽coach whose gruff style has cost him so many jobs that this new one,聽if he flubs it, could be his last. He and his student players are mutually聽unimpressed with each other. (The boys, virtually all Latino, make fun of聽his surname.) But Jim realizes early on that, although the players don鈥檛聽excel at football, they are, thanks to the stamina they鈥檝e built up in the聽agricultural fields, exceptional cross-country competitors.
Niki Caro (鈥�Whale Rider鈥�) and her screenwriters, Christopher聽Cleveland, Bettina Gilois, and Grant Thompson, play up all the obvious聽tropes as the team wends its way to the state championships. A few of the聽young actors, including Carlos Pratts as the most troubled and most gifted聽of the runners, and Ramiro Rodriguez, as the team鈥檚 mascot, are worth聽watching.
Costner is excellent, as he often is in sports-themed movies (such as聽鈥�Bull Durham,鈥� 鈥淔ield of Dreams,鈥� and 鈥淭in Cup鈥�). He could have聽sailed through this film but he gives his role an ingrained orneriness and聽melancholy that lifts the entire enterprise. Grade:聽B- (Rated PG for thematic material, some violence and language.)
