Movie Review: Invincible **1/2

As fans of sports and movies, Americans never seem to grow tired of Cinderella-type underdog stories. The formula is standard: the hero emerges from the gutter to reach the heights of professional and financial success. Horatio Alger became famous as an author by writing over 100 novels with this exact plot. The farther down in the gutter he starts and the higher he climbs, the better. Football is our favorite game in America and every fan dreams of playing in the NFL, maybe even as a walk-on. Amazingly, a man named Vince Papale walked on to play three seasons for the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1970s. Not only did he walk on, he did so at age 30, having not played college football. In the movie, he drives a clunking car, works as a part-time bartender, his wife just left him and her parting note told him he would never amount to anything. At the outset, then, "Invincible," the story of a real man living the Horatio Alger dream, has every element of a good and even a great movie. Mark Wahlberg apparently engaged in some sleight-of-hand by lying about his fictional college football playing days in order to get this role. He saw a good part and did not want to let anything get in his way. A determined star is always an asset to an underdog movie. Greg Kinnear does a pretty good job as Dick Vermeil, who was coaching his first NFL season after a successful stint at UCLA. Unfortunately, the writing, editing and directing leave some to be desired.
When sports fans watch movies, they want to feel as though they are on the front row of a game. The speed and finesse of a running back, the impact of a hit, and the thud of the ballcarrier hitting the ground are all features they enjoy. This is the experience that "Miracle" offers its viewers. In that movie, they filmed real hockey players doing real hockey plays and almost never used slow motion. In "Invincible," Mark Wahlberg's lack of a football carrier did not hurt his believability because anyone could have played Vince Papale in this movie. The frequent use of slow motion and the multiple cuts during scenes will leave you convinced that you have never seen one play all the way through. Even in movies, the viewers want to see feats of athletic prowess, which we do not see here. The script is unimaginative - I do not believe that a coach would chide a player, "I stuck my neck out for you," because that attitude leaves the coach much too vulnerable. In a number of respects, the makers seem to have just let the script write itself around their plot formula and ended up with an unremarkable product. There are some good training scenes and for their sake "Invincible" is worth seeing once, but it is not destined to be a classic that people watch on an annual basis.