A sports movie that triumphs against all odds and pleases fans can be a beautiful thing—if it doesn’t get lost in clichés, and if it respects reality as much as it does inspiration. Unstoppable, a wrestling drama based on the life of college champion Anthony Robles, is an honest and exciting take on the genre, with real commercial potential. It has plenty of familiar tropes, but in its own simple way it strikes a chord with authenticity. The true story it tells is nothing short of extraordinary, which is perhaps why the filmmakers didn’t feel the need to over-emphasize it.
In the opening scene, we see the 2006 Philadelphia High School Championships. Anthony, a high school senior from Mesa, Arizona, played by the wonderful Jharrel Jerome (who was Chiron’s love interest in Moonlight 2 and took on the role of Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), is getting ready to compete in the championship match. The first thing you notice about him is the first thing anyone notices: he only has one leg (his left).
But at this point, one of the viewers seriously wonders if this is a charity competition. Her friend makes a crass joke, saying that she thinks even she can beat him. At which point a woman a few rows away, played by Jennifer Lopez, says, “That’s my son!” which silences them. Their comments, while indefensible, are in a way consistent with our own perspective when we first see Anthony. We look at this one-legged wrestler and think: He really has a serious flaw—a handicap he must overcome. We think we know exactly what kind of movie we’re about to see.
In reality, though, it’s not that simple. Anthony may have a flaw, but when the game starts, we see him move his body with aerodynamic finesse, like a breakdancer. It’s not like having one leg is hard. featureBut he developed a wrestling style from the body God gave him, and it's elegant, muscular, and powerful. He won the national high school championship, and from that moment on we stopped thinking of him as a “one-legged wrestler.” He great Wrestler. He is very strong and very competitive. He doesn't feel sorry for himself and doesn't make a big deal about his body shape.
On the night of his victory, Anthony is the center of a party, where a talent scout from Drexel University in Philadelphia makes him a fantastic offer. He invites him to attend the university there and says he’ll get a full scholarship (tuition, room, and board). Anthony seems less than thrilled; Drexel has never won a national wrestling championship, and he’s thinking about holding out for something better. We in the audience are already gearing up for a sports movie (Anthony walks out of the party to stand alone in the night in the footsteps of his hero Rocky Balboa at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), and we might think, “Yeah, that’s right. Aim for the best!”
But the road to victory is rocky. No other college will recruit Anthony; his options are limited. He thinks he might prefer to go to Arizona State University, in his hometown of Mesa, because it already has champions. But when he meets Coach Sean Charles (Don Cheadle), all the coach can offer him is a no-scholarship and a chance to be “just a regular guy.” In other words, he’ll compete to make the team, but he’ll be up against players who have already been recruited.
The weight of choices in the real world, and their limitations, weighs heavily on Anthony. That’s the quality of Unstoppable as a film. Directed by William Goldenberg (his feature debut), the gifted film editor who edited Argo, Air, and Zero Dark Thirty (with Dylan Tichenor), and produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company, Artists Equity, the story it tells, though it will leave you with a lump in your throat, is one of disappointment and familial trauma. It’s closer in spirit to David O. Russell’s The Fighter than to Remember the Titans or Hoosiers.
At home, Lopez plays his mother, Judy, in what may be the most complete onscreen performance she’s ever given, and he has a whole host of younger siblings of varying ethnicities, but his father, Rick, is a real piece of work. He’s a passive-aggressive jerk, a prison guard who turns everything into a fight. Cannavale plays him in a “blackface” accent that registers as a terrifying pretense. Rick makes a formal show of support for Anthony, but he can’t stop challenging him, criticizing his accomplishments. After a while, you realize he’s one of those terrible fathers who views everyone, even his own children, as competition. The father in the wrestling drama “Iron Claw” was a homegrown fascist who ruined his son’s life, but Cannavale’s Rick is more cunning, as he softens the destroyer inside. The fact that Anthony isn’t his biological son is the cherry on the cake of abuse.
Jharrel Jerome gives a quiet performance, and we’re so used to a certain level of intimidation in sports heroes in movies that at first we take it for granted that he’s a recessive trait, as if Anthony’s loss of a limb has made him serious and cautious. But as the film progresses, you realize that Jerome’s quiet performance is simply his way of embodying Anthony as a real person—an incredibly specific soul who feels his feelings but doesn’t voice them. He’s gentle and thoughtful, with eyes of intensity. The way his single leg defines his identity is that he’s willing to literally break himself to succeed.
He goes to Arizona State University, and during one of his daily training sessions, wrestlers trying out for the team have to run three miles to the top of a rocky mountain filled with cacti. Anthony does this on CrutchesThat’s how much he wants it. He goes to the gym before anyone else, lifting massive weights during workouts; it’s his way of using the greater demands he places on himself to compensate for how he was born. Yet his ultimate challenge isn’t the leg—it’s what happens at home. Rick snaps and leaves, then returns, only to reveal his ultimate flaw, financial. Lopez makes Judy a mother who loves her aspiring star athlete son but is trapped, crushed by life. Lopez makes you feel the raw desperation, as well as the will it takes, as an act of love, to overcome it. The compelling quality of “Unstoppable” is that it doesn’t make overcoming the odds—at home, or in the wrestling ring—seem so easy.
The film isn’t visually flashy, but that’s part of its appeal. The interior of Robles’s house is warm but somber; it feels like a home. Don Cheadle’s performance is restrained elegance; he’s a gym instructor who’s a humble teacher. What Anthony is after is pure. Wrestling isn’t a sport with all that much money attached to it (unless you count “professional wrestling,” which is something else entirely). Anthony eventually makes it to the NCAA tournament, where he faces the undefeated Hulk Matt McDonough (Johnny DeJulius), who the film never hints at as its Ivan Drago. Even Matt the boxer is a solid character. But in the end, if you get a touch of the real Rocky vibe, it’s because the film earned it.
