We Are Marshall

Theatrical Release Date: 2006 12 22 (USA)

UPC: 012569835122

Studio: Warner Home Video

MPAA Rating: PG   Contains:[Violence, Adult Situations, Questionable for Children, Profanity, Alcohol Consumption]

Summary: A true story of tragedy, hope, and resilience comes to the screen in this sports drama. Huntington, WV, is home to Marshall University, a school where college football is a way of life. Huntington is also a town that learned to deal with tragedy in the fall of 1970 when Marshall's "Thundering Herd" boarded an airliner to return home after a football game in North Carolina. The jet crashed into a hill due to bad weather, and 75 members of Marshall's football squad and athletic staff died that night. The accident dealt a crippling blow to the city of Huntington, as well as Marshall's faculty and student body, and university president Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) considered abandoning the school's football program. But instead Coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) was recruited from Ohio's College of Wooster to rebuild Marshall's football program. Lengyel was not na?ve about the task ahead of him, and working beside Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), an assistant coach who narrowly missed the doomed flight and was one of the program's only survivors, he came to understand his job was not just to put a team on the field, but help a college and a community heal their wounds from the tragic accident. Together Lengyel and Dawson turned a handful of rookies and second-string players into a competitive team who in 1971 showed the world what they could do in a legendary game against Marshall's rivals, Xavier University. Produced with the cooperation of Marshall University and filmed in part on their campus, We Are Marshall also stars Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie, and January Jones. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Category: Drama

Features: Legendary Coaches: How coaches overcome adversity
Theatrical trailer

We Are Marshall

Format: DVD

Release Date: 09/18/2007

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 131 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Disc #1 -- We Are Marshall
1. Herd Heartbreaker [5:24]
2. Homeward Bound [5:02]
3. Tragedy [7:31]
4. Collective Grief [3:45]
5. Proper Course of Action [4:18]
6. We Are Marshall [3:05]
7. Coach Search [4:28]
8. Maybe Jack Can Help [5:05]
9. First Time for Everything [5:13]
10. Back on Track [3:49]
11. I Should Have Been [2:18]
12. Recruitment Drive [3:46]
13. Only Man for the Job [3:54]
14. Good-Looking Board [3:24]
15. Football Fever [4:58]
16. Veering Over to WVU [6:44]
17. Season Opener [5:32]
18. Scarring Memories [3:20]
19. Not Honoring Them [4:40]
20. That Was My Team [2:17]
21. What This Is About [4:11]
22. Like Every Other Team [4:01]
23. What Day Is It? [1:52]
24. All Out of Excuses [2:18]
25. Heart on the Line [4:01]
26. Kicking It [3:44]
27. We're Gonna Be All Right [2:07]
28. Second-Half Underdogs [4:20]
29. Touchdown [4:17]
30. Epilogue [4:41]
31. End Credits [7:05]

Derek Armstrong

Many sports movies blend together, relying as they do on inexperienced, undersized, or underfunded underdogs. We Are Marshall presents a different kind of underdog: a team built literally from ashes, as nearly the entire Marshall University football team was killed in a November 1970 plane crash. The story of the Marshall Thundering Herd was begging to be told, and McG gets it just right. The director known for his flashy approach to the Charlie's Angels movies, and for the abbreviated moniker that irks his detractors, shows exquisite maturity in handling this sober material, eliminating the bombast, but keeping the crispness and visual kineticism appropriate to a football movie. Of course, this is much more than a football movie. The Marshall plane crash realized the distant fears felt whenever an entire team boards an airplane together, and the aftermath predictably tore the school and the town apart. Matthew McConaughey's Jack Lengyel rightly observes that it doesn't matter whether the greenhorn Marshall players win, or even how they play, but that they play. This frees We Are Marshall from having to follow the structure of a typical sports film, letting it instead be about the unimaginable process of building a team from the ground up while the principles are deep in mourning. Playing a football coach, McConaughey has found a role perfectly suited to his mixture of playfulness and sincerity. He gives a warm, precise performance, never once phoning it in. Other standouts in the cast include Matthew Fox as the assistant coach who was supposed to be on the plane, Ian McShane as a prominent booster who lost a son in the crash, and Anthony Mackie as a player who missed the trip due to injury, whose grief-stricken passion is perfectly toned. That rush you feel whenever an undeterred crowd chants "We are Marshall!" is no manipulation. This is an intense story told with heart. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi

Cast and Crew: William Fay  Executive Producer 
Christophe Beck  Composer (Music Score) 
Brent O'Connor  Executive Producer 
McG  Director 
McG  Producer 
Basil Iwanyk  Producer 
Thomas Tull  Executive Producer 
Jamie Linden  Screenwriter 
Scott Mednick  Executive Producer 
Jeanne Allgood  Executive Producer 
Matthew McConaughey  Actor 
Matthew Fox  Actor 
Anthony Mackie  Actor 
David Strathairn  Actor 
Ian McShane  Actor 
Kate Mara  Actor 
January Jones  Actor 
Kimberly Williams-Paisley  Actor 
Arlen Escarpeta  Actor 
Brian Geraghty  Actor 
Tommy Cresswell  Actor 
Christian Kanupke  Actor 
Nina Jones  Actor 
Kevin Atkins  Actor 
Mark Patton  Actor 
Huntley Ritter  Actor 
Brett Rice  Actor 
Dalton Polston  Actor 
Andrew Wilson Williams  Actor 
Ellie Zellers  Actor 
Mark Oliver  Actor 
Brian Beegle  Actor 
L. Warren Young  Actor 
David Dwyer  Actor 
Wes Brown  Actor 
Mike Pniewski  Actor 
Cafabian Heard  Actor 
Mandy Best  Actor 
Nikky Williams  Actor 
Laura Shay Griffin  Actor 
Katie Kneeland  Actor 
Elizabeth Omilami  Actor 
Scott Hilley  Actor 
Andrew DiPalma  Actor 
Jeff Adelman  Actor 
Dolan Wilson  Actor 
Billy Woods  Actor 
Sharalene Kile  Actor 
Bill Crabb  Actor 
Phillip Ivey  Actor 
Wilbur Fitzgerald  Actor 
Jody Thompson  Actor 
David Ramsey  Actor 
Rhoda Griffis  Actor 
Billy Bennett  Actor 
Patrick Parker  Actor 
Joey Nappo  Actor 
Michael DiFiore  Actor 
Maurice Bryant  Actor 
Tim Crowley  Actor 
Don Young  Actor 
Alex Van  Actor 
Ron Clinton Smith  Actor 
Taber Lathrop  Actor 
Jake Cooper  Actor 
William Gorman  Actor 
Anaiah Petty  Actor 
Jeff Portell  Actor 
Alyssa Caputo  Actor 
Keith Morehouse  Actor 
Mike Ribaudo  Actor 
Bobby Jordan  Actor 
Dock Pollard  Actor 
Bert Beatson  Actor 
Bobby Jon Drinkard  Actor 
Ryan Sloth  Actor 
Brent Garber  Actor 
Steven Barr  Actor 

Country: USA