I’m a sucker for a good sports film. I just love the inspirational nature of so many true sports stories. I’ve seen hundreds of them over the years. Unstoppable is just another one in a long line of sports films that I’ve seen and will in the future. Like so many inspirational films of this nature, it’ll pull on your heartstrings. It did with me.  In fact, it made me cry twice during key moments. That’s when you know a sports movie is working. I’m sure I won’t be the only one who cries while watching this movie based on real people and true events.

Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome) is a world-class Greco-Roman wrestler. He’s a star at his high school in Mesa Arizona and wins the national championship his senior year. He has his sights set on going to Iowa where they’ve had many National Champions on their roster over the years. They don’t want him though because of his disability.  After some deliberation and arguments with his parents Judy and Rich (Jennifer Lopez,  Bobby Cannavale) he decides to try and walk on at Arizona St, his local university, even though the coach, Sean Charles (Don Cheadle), at the time discourages him from doing so. He doesn’t like to take no for an answer though and he wants to prove everything who didn’t believe in him wrong.

William Goldenberger is known for his work as an editor of such films as Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Miami Vice. He’s stepped out of the editing booth and taken a seat in the director’s chair for the first time with this film. He takes what he’s learned in his long career as an editor and applies it as a director here. He has a lot of cuts during all the wrestling scenes and gets quite a bit of story in the little over 2 hour running time. As an editor, he has a different perspective than a director, but he does a great job of giving this movie the emotional pull most sports biopics need to get their story across. I never felt the length and there wasn’t a wasted scene or line of dialogue during this sports biopic.

Jharrel Jerome came on the acting scene with a bang in the HBO mini-series When They See Us where he won an Emmy for his role as Cory Wise. A young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jerome has been doing some good things since then in I’m A Virgo, Concrete Cowboy, and Monster.  He’s a solid young actor and he gives another good performance in this film. Most of the time he plays Anthony Robles as an angry young man who is determined to make people see him for who wants to be instead of a disabled person. It’s a good turn for Jerome, but it’s mostly a one-note performance.  It’s the underdog and inspirational moments that sell this movie. As well as the supporting cast.

Speaking of the supporting cast. Michael Pena plays Robles High School wrestling coach Bobby Williams. He has some good scenes with Jerome helping him to not give up in the face of so many obstacles and diversity.  One good one with Lopez as well. Cannavale has the typical role of the father figure or adversary who’s against the main character or team in the story. He comes across as pretty bad in the role, but that’s the point of the character. He’s done better in his career. Most recently in Ezra, where he played a good father instead of an abusive one. Cheadle is also playing the normal type of coach or mentor role as the coach of the ASU wrestling team. He has a few good moments of realizing his mistakes about this man he underestimated at the beginning. 

Jennifer Lopez has made a career of proving people wrong about her acting career. When They thought she was finished she’d come back with a role like in Hustlers or now this one. She plays a struggling mother of five kids including the one she adopted in Anthony. She has many moments acting opposite Cannavale and Jerome where she is mad, sad, happy, and everything in between. She brings everything she has learned in her long acting career to this role of the struggling mom. Her love for her children and the fight she has in her as this character comes through. I’m sure Lopez used her very own experiences as a mother to give her some help with bringing this character based on a real woman to life. I was amazed by how impressive she was in this role.

One thing I always mention when I write about sports films is the depiction of said sport in the movie I’m watching. In this case, it’s amateur Grecko-Roman wrestling. I was familiar with this type of wrestling from my time working at a high school watching practices and meets, and watching the Olympics, but let’s say it like it is. This kind of wrestling isn’t very exciting to watch, but Goldenberg made it very exciting. The journey of this man played a big part in that. The cutting back and forth to the crowd or coaches yelling helped me be more engaged with it. I was completely invested in this type of wrestling once I knew the context it was shown. I recommend anybody who doesn’t follow this sport to watch this film to get a better idea of how exciting it can be. 

The one thing about this movie that blew me away was the CGI led by Landon Bootsma. Jerome is an actor who has all of his limbs, but he plays a character who is missing a leg. The CGI is seamless. I couldn’t tell for one moment Jerome had a leg. I’m sure a green screen slipover sleeve was used so they could take his real leg out, but it looked so real I wasn’t able to tell at all. With this story in particular this was a key element in making the story feel authentic.  I could concentrate on other aspects of the movie. That’s a good thing. You wouldn’t think that visual effects would play a big part in a sports biopic, they do.

Unstoppable is another inspirational sports biopic in a long line of them over the many decades that film has existed. It’s not like all the others though. It has a few things other great sports movies don’t have. First of all, it has phenomenal visual effects. That is a big part of this story. The direction by Goldenberg is very good considering it’s his debut as a director. The performances from the entire cast are solid with Jerome and Lopez giving the best of the lot. This film would normally be considered just another sports biopic but it’s not. It has an emotional pull that sucked me in. I cried multiple times at this movie because the story was so relatable at times. My mother and father were very similar to these and I have a disability that I had to overcome my entire life. This is a film that I very much loved and I hope many others will when it comes out in theaters or on Prime Video this year or next.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen