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Review: Murderball
 Cast:
Joe Bishop
Keith Cavill
Andy Cohn
Scott Hogsett
Directed by:
Henry Alex Rubin
Dana Adam Shapiro
I don't think I have seen such a year for solid after solid documentary like 2005. But this one is not about penguins, birds, or bears. This one is about quadriplegics who play full-contact rugby in Mad Max-style wheelchairs - overcoming unimaginable obstacles to compete in the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. You hear a movie about people in wheelchairs and the first thing that comes to mind is a sappy, over the top, and cheesy movie that will make you shed some tears. This is where you could not be anymore wrong.
This is an in-your-face, hard nosed, and brutally frank look at these quadriplegics. The material is never forced, or played for sympathy. We see these men in a hard-hitting sport, with girlfriends, a sex life, and it treats them as human beings. At times you would not even know they are quadriplegics since they live such a full and healthy life.
The movie takes us back and forth between the rugby sport and their own personal back-stories from the quadriplegics themselves. We get introduced to Mark Zupan. Who is the leader of team USA, has a goatee, and numerous tattoos. Also, quite a cute girlfriend. You get the feeling he would be a leader and a bad ass in or out of the wheel chair. His accident occurred while in the backseat of a friend's truck who was drunk driving. We get some real genuine and sincere moments with him and his friend who is dealing with a world of quilt.
We also meet Joe Soares who at one time was one of the best quadriplegic rugby players in the game. Old age and slowness kicked him off the USA team, in which he helped win a gold medal. He is now coaching their rivals Team Canada. USA has won the past 11 tournaments.
We also meet Keith Cavill who is just recently confined to a wheelchair. So it's interesting how you get to see the people like Mark and others who have been in it for a while and how they are used to it, deal with it, and almost second nature to them. Then Keith in the early stages and showing difficult it is and how he has to adjust to it. And how things might not ever be the same again, he does have other opportunities in life.
The director has confidence in the stories of each to let them tell their stories on their own without the director giving their view on it. He sits the camera on them and you hear it directly from their lips. Each story is different from the other, but deeply interesting and profound in it's own way.
This is a funny, touching, hard-hitting, and deeply moving film about family, revenge, honor, sex, courage and life. The film benefits from pulling no punches and being seen from an unbiased eye. This is not a "poor me" documentary or a film to get "people to feel sorry" for quadriplegics. Quite the opposite. It's a film that says, alright, something bad happened to me, now what? Life is not over.
I think that is a universal message that can be enjoyed by everyone. In a year of wonderful documentaries, Murderball is no exception.
Review by Tony Farinella
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