Heart of Champions is another in a long line of sports movies that labor to place undue significance upon the events of their story. In general, the story of a sports team’s triumph over adversity still comes down to the Big Game, which is a problem in many respects. Chief among them, any other concern in that story – regarding its characters, for instance, over the situation of their sporting accomplishment – typically goes out the window. The Big Game acts as the ultimate equalizer, tidying up any intrapersonal or dramatic conflict with unfair ease. In the case of this movie, the team is the rowing crew team for an Ivy League university, and the Big Game – technically, the Big Race – is a national championship.
The year is 1999, and the start of the new season/school year approaches following the team’s loss on account of some petty, macho nonsense. John (Alex MacNicoll) is the leader of the pack and is dating Sara (Lilly Krug), who once dated Alex (Alexander Ludwig). He’s the least likable member of the team and the one with the most to lose in terms of reputation and worthiness in the eyes of his father (David James Elliott), who happens to be an important figure on staff at the school. Much of the driving force of the film’s drama surrounds the ongoing rivalry between John and Alex, especially with regard to Sara and a ruptured “bro code” (the implication being that John started dating Sara quite soon after her breakup with Alex) that has caused a lot of tension.
It’s more than a bit tired and old-hat to shape a film’s drama around a love triangle, especially in such a way that keeps upping the melodramatic ante like screenwriter Vojin Gjaja does here. Keeping in mind that the film must find a way to boil everything down to the Big Race, the easily avoidable tragedy that ensues comes off as a particularly mean-spirited method of recalibrating the characters’ and film’s priorities in order to get all of these young men on the same page about their scholarship duties.
In an apparent attempt to break up the log jam of this half of the story, the movie also introduces Chris (Charles Melton), a transfer student trying to recalibrate after his own tragic past, and the romance that sparks between him and Sara’s friend Nisha (Ash Santos), which eventually leads to some equally tired relationship drama over a misunderstanding. Then there is Michael Shannon, a great actor capable of tremendous intensity, who dials back a bit on his usual persona to play the team’s coach. He’s Jack Murphy, a Vietnam veteran who wants nothing more than to be anywhere other than at this school, coaching this team of insolent and whiny children. Shannon is smart not to adhere to the usual “movie coach” template in his reading of Jack as a traumatized, short-tempered, but generally well-adjusted man, and the one unique thing about Gjaja’s screenplay is where it finds Jack – both literally and figuratively – at the end of this story and, in particular, following that tragic climax.
Everything else about director Michael Mailer’s movie is familiar. Supporting characters fit firmly into sports-movie archetypes. The finale hammers home the stakes of losing the Big Race, even though we have already passed the threshold of really caring what happens if they do. Heart of Champions is only unique for showing us a rather new side of Michael Shannon and giving him a character worth essaying. Otherwise, it’s the same, old thing.
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