A 1930s-set story centered on the University of Washington’s rowing team, from their Depression-era beginnings to winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
George Clooney’s latest movie is a biographical sports drama about the University of Washington rowing team, who set out to beat better funded teams from richer states to get the opportunity to represent the United States at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. It tells this story through the viewpoint of coach Al Ulbrickson Sr. (Joel Edgerton) and rower Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), with Clooney taking an old fashioned approach to the material that feels more akin with movies of the past than those of the present – ‘Chariots of Fire’ a clear influence in particular.
It would be fair to say ‘The Boys in the Boat’ is not likely to surprise anyone who has seen a sports underdog movie before, and this undoubtedly hits every cliché in the book, but if this is a genre you enjoy (as I do), there is plenty to enjoy here. It begins by introducing us to Joe, who we learn is incredibly poor (this is his main character trait), shortly before the trials to get on to Al’s team. Alongside 7 others and a reserve, Joe is selected, and we then follow the team as they go through various training montages and regattas where they gradually face tougher and tougher opposition, building up to the Olympics themselves. There will be setbacks along the way of course, and there will be a tantrum that nearly sees Joe thrown off the team, but for the most part this plays out very much as you expect it too.
The rowing scenes are kinetic and exciting, even as we know this movie wouldn’t be a movie if the team at its centre were not successful, while there are some good scenes between Joe and Peter Guinness as the team’s boat designer and builder, who is essentially the father figure Joe needed but never really had. I did get a sense that at times Clooney wants to be a little more daring in his storytelling, particularly in digging into the dynamic with 1936 of course being the ‘Nazi’ games, and we do get shots of Hitler at events and a clunky scene with the Black American sprinter Jesse Owens, but he never really commits to it which leaves it hanging to a degree. That leaves us with a movie that is solidly crafted with a nicely told sports underdog story, but ‘The Boys in the Boat’ plays it a little too safe and predictable to be anything better than merely good.
Rating: 3/5
Directed By: George Clooney
Starring: Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton, Jack Mulhern, Sam Strike, Alec Newman, Peter Guinness, Luke Slattery, Thomas Elms, Tom Varey, Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Coban, Hadley Robinson, Courtney Henggeler, James Wolk and Chris Diamantopoulos
'I have a purpose. If you think that it's some kind of blessing it's not. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through.' Marty Supreme (2025) 