The director Rod Lurie has had an eclectic profession that usually tilts towards the darkish aspect — he has made movies concerning the nitty-gritty of politics (“Nothing But the Truth,” “The Contender”), he did the remake of “Straw Dogs,” and he reached a new peak of artistry with “The Outpost” (2019), in which he drew on his expertise as a fight veteran to craft a staggeringly genuine struggle movie concerning the battle in Afghanistan.
Given that monitor report, it’s a shock to see Lurie direct a heart-tugging faith-based soccer drama launched by Angel Studios. “The Senior” is a straight-down-the-middle-of-the-plate crowd-pleaser that’s been normal out of a true-life fairy story: the story of Mike Flynt, who in 2007 rejoined his former West Texas school soccer crew on the age of 59. It’s principally a soft-hearted paint-by-numbers TV-movie, stocked with homilies concerning the recreation of soccer vs. the sport of life. Yet it’s an efficient soft-hearted paint-by-numbers TV-movie.
Michael Chiklis, wanting like Joe Rogan in about 10 years, performs Flynt with the center and soul of a robust Teddy bear, and although the movie is unabashedly manipulative (as is each film launched by Angel Studios), “The Senior” earns its lumps in the throat proper together with its lumps on the sector. After Flynt rejoins his outdated crew, one of many coaches even says, “He’s like a 59-year-old Rudy!” That kind of nails it. “The Senior” is a type of sports activities movies based mostly on a actual story that feels extra like a film than most made-up sports activities films do.
When I used to be rising up, certainly one of my favourite books — I learn it over and over — was “Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer.” It was an inside take a look at the 1967 season of the Green Bay Packers as advised by Jerry Kramer, the Packers proper guard who chronicled the insanely punishing self-discipline of being coached by Vince Lombardi, who ran the Packers’ coaching camp like a cross between a drill sergeant and a guard at Abu Ghraib. What astonished me concerning the e book was the way in which it was equal components ache and religion: Being an NFL lineman was about as bruising an ordeal as one may think about, but the gamers shared a reverence; earlier than each recreation, they might pray. As Kramer captured it, their bone-and-muscle-crunching agony, like Lombardi’s teaching, was all a part of a larger calling.
“The Senior,” too, is a movie that locates that place in soccer the place rehab meets rapture. The opening half hour sketches in the backstory, which feels virtually too absurd to imagine (although it really occurred, so we roll with it). The film jumps again to 1970, when Flynt (performed in the early scenes by Shawn Patrick Clifford) is the center linebacker and crew captain of the Lobos, the varsity squad of Sull Ross State University. He’s a chief with one vice: He likes to struggle…an excessive amount of. In truth, his want for fisticuffs will get him tossed out of faculty.
Cut to 37 years later. Mike, now performed with a pleasant glower by the bald and barrel-chested Chiklis, is a construction-site foreman, married for many years to Eileen (Mary Stuart Masterson), with a number of grown kids. He’s doing all proper. But he’s haunted by his bully of a father (a number of flashbacks to dad instructing the younger Mike the way to struggle by calling him a “little runt” and punching him in the face), and on the subject of his personal college-instructor son, Micah (Brandon Flynn), he’s much less a supporting guardian than a nagging narcissist, all the time making an attempt to get the child to observe in his jock footsteps.
It’s a 35-year school reunion that brings Mike collectively along with his outdated teammates, the place the kooky thought comes up that he may really rejoin the crew as a result of he by no means completed his senior 12 months. The movie doesn’t get a lot into the technicalities (wouldn’t he need to reapply to school?); it cuts proper to the coach, Sam Weston (Rob Corddry), treating Mike’s try and check out for the crew just like the joke it should absolutely be. But Mike, who has retained his combating power, needs this do-over as a form of life metaphor. If he can play school soccer once more, then possibly he can heal the previous.
“The Senior” is a monumentally typical and healthful film, full of coaching montages and scenes the place Mike, who likes to play “The Rubberband Man” by the Spinners in his headset, confronts his new multi-racial crew of bruisers and novice rappers, solely to find that they’re principally cool concerning the man they name “Fred Flintsone” and “Pops.” The actual Mike Flynt has a Texas drawl, which I form of want Chiklis had adopted. Yet he makes Mike a prickly and devoted try-hard paragon you may’t assist rooting for.
Mike makes the crew, although not as a beginning participant. Once the season begins, the query turns into: Will he be allowed to play in a recreation? Or will the worry that he’s going to interrupt his neck or paralyze his physique make the coach hold him on the sidelines? (But if that anxiousness is there, why did the coach let him onto the crew in the primary place? Oh, by no means thoughts.) Mary Stuart Masterson is superb because the down-home spouse who decides to face by Mike whilst she acknowledges that he’s placing himself by some Texas-football model of remedy. And Chiklis is bodily convincing — an growing older bull who nonetheless is aware of the way to transfer — in addition to emotionally compelling, particularly when he’s handed the duty of giving the half-time hellbent/kick-ass/inspirational locker-room speech.
Mike discovers that his darkish father saved a scrapbook of his son’s sports activities clippings, and that he additionally saved a Bible, inscribed with the phrases “Lord, give me the strength to forgive others. And myself.” If you consider it, that’s the inscription of a sociopath, however let’s not nitpick: The Angel Studios model requires an injection of spiritual piety. Ever for the reason that days of Jerry Kramer, it’s been axiomatic that soccer and religion go collectively, and “The Senior” turns that into a film system that works.