Director: Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.0
Extreme rugby for quadriplegics gets a souped-up once-over by the filmmaking team of Rubin and writer Shapiro - in the age of super-dangerous motocross suicide leaps and daredevil youths skateboarding over any and every imaginable hard surface, who's to say that just because you're in a wheelchair you can't still be involved in 'contact' sports? As it turns out, this slant is both the movie's strength and its fundamental weakness: it's a celebration of the durability of the human spirit once the flesh itself has been immobilized, but it's also, at its core, a pity party, going for emotion at all costs (don't have a heart attack when the camera crew's around!). The goal, obviously, is to be uplifting, but after this shameless little project was over, I was left with a hollow feeling inside, which I feel is a disservice to its participants who want to be viewed as people first and not durable patients. I can't help but think that an hour-long talk by charismatic superstar Mark Zupan would do far more for the human spirit and the sport.
