Director: George Clooney
Writers: Mark L. Smith
Stars: Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton
Synopsis: A 1930s-set story centered on the University of Washington’s rowing team, from their Depression-era beginnings to winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
For some reason, after making the audacious newsroom drama Good Night and Good Luck, Academy Award winner George Clooney has begun to create underwhelming mainstream big-budget films with little fanfare. We are talking Leatherheads, The Ides of March, Suburbicon, The Monuments Men, and The Midnight Sky, all of which tanked commercially, critically, or both. (The Ides of March is overrated; come at me.) So, the lateral move to directing streaming films for Prime Video seems to be a cinematic purgatory punishment until he’s granted a reprieve back into the studio system. That maneuver may have paid off with last year’s The Tender Bar and now an inspirational sports film, The Boys in the Boat, which does just enough right to make you cheer, but you only partially leave your seat to do so.
Based on the best-selling non-fiction book of the same name by Daniel James Brown, the story follows the unbelievable David versus Goliath story of an unheralded University of Washington rowing team that defied the odds by representing the United States at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The team is coached by Washington alumni Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), who rocks the boat (yeah, I said it) by naming the junior varsity team over the senior class that worked for years to get to the point of competing in the Olympic trials. Ulbrickson handpicks Tom Bolles (James Wolk) to be his second in command, and they have a secret weapon: legendary racing shell builder and designer George Pocock (Pete Guinness), who crafts the world’s finest rowing boats.
While the story at the surface seems to be an underdog story about proving “the master race” of Hitler’s German athletic team and its core, The Boys in the Boat is essentially about classism. Clooney and Oscar-nominated Mark L. Smith do an excellent job of creating a working-class story—literally, rags to riches, considering the time frame—by focusing on Joe Rantz (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’s Callum Turner), a homeless college student abandoned by his family because of the Great Depression.
That means not only does Turner fight the rich kids at school, but the eight-man rowing team fights the likes of Cal-Berkley and Stanford, the blue bloods of the elite Olympic sports schools. That means a school like Washington only has a tenth of the resources, but this being an incredibly accurate story genre picture, they have nine-tenths more heart. Also, the film showcases how institutional power keeps changing the rules to keep Al Ulbrickson’s squad from achieving their dreams.
The Boys in the Boat has a jaw-dropping, handsome-looking production for costumes, hair, and makeup, as well as CGI-assisted visuals of cityscapes and the beauty of natural landscapes. Of course, considering the time and place, it’s hard not to make anything look grand, even in drab and dire circumstances. You can’t help but feel that Mr. Clooney has taken the viewer to another time and place.
Of course, considering the time we are in, the story has an eye-opening sequence where the world’s most notorious oppressor and mass murderer is in attendance; you cannot help but notice how the director’s film could be called “Clooney’s Movie, so White” and fails to mention the oppression going on in the United States home front because the integration of college athletics didn’t happen until 1946. For example, there’s no more significant turn-of-the-century moment in the same Olympic games than when the shoehorn of Jesse Owens took place.
Yet, you can’t help but get swept up in The Boys in the Boat’s incredible story or classic subplots when the guy gets the girl or when a team works together to overcome insurmountable odds. Clooney also has some creative camera work, creating action sequences that could look stale. You’ll notice he always shoots from the bottom, showcasing the athletic moves of the rowing team, and has some background behind him to prove how fast the boat is moving.
This also shows the squad’s intense speed and coordinated maneuvers, who are always in sync, which puts most of the sports poetry in motion where the majority cannot get close enough to see. The Boys in the Boat is well-acted, with Edgerton and Wolk doing just enough to make the cliched characters enjoyable. However, Peter Guinness’ father figure to the boys, especially Turner’s Rantz, brings some heartwarming feelings that ring true and are universal.
While you may wish the film had taken a more significant swing for a finale with more extraordinary grandeur. This is a frequent issue in Mr. Clooney’s work, where he undersells his film’s climaxes, which lose some emotional resonance. At the same time, the film has a shallower character development than one would hope. In fact, if you read the book, it’s apparent the filmmakers here downplayed the contribution of Pocock’s work that helped the team break records. However, we will give that a pass because The Boys in the Boat does hit the mark with spectacular sports scenes while showcasing a sense of teamwork during a period of great worldwide unrest that connects the audience beyond the agony of defeat or the thrill of victory.
