Invincible: A Film Review

I think I'd rather wear Shaquille O'Neal's used jockstrap over my head than watch one more uplifting, "inspired by a true story" movie about an ordinary but tough-as-nails athlete beating the odds and winning a) the girl, b) a championship, or c) lots of money. Ugh. No mas, no mas. Unfortunately, because it's my job, I found Invincible in my mailbox today, a film directed by Ericson Core and starring Mark Wahlberg.

Wahlberg plays Vince Papale, an ex-bartender who joins the Philadelphia Eagles when the down-and-out team holds an open tryout. Reading the back of the DVD, it informs me that Papale is a "scappy underdog who helped his team rediscover its winning spirit, and in the process rallied a city when it needed it most."

Yeah, right. Here we go again. Ugh.

Sure, Core tries valiantly to put lipstick on this pigskin schmaltz but he can't beat the dim, formulaic script. Not that it really matters anyway. Miracle, Rudy, The Natural,We Are Marshall and other films in this genre are testosterone-fueled soap operas for the ESPN-addicted armchair quarterbacks out there who always want more of these romanticized male fantasies. And Invincible is just the latest old idea dressed up in new cleats.

Although, I have to admit, Mark Wahlberg is a hell of a salesman. The other supporting actors in Invincible do the best they can with the dull stereotypes they're stuck with and Greg Kinnear as Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, the guy who put "burnout" into the dictionary, is painfully miscast (the stupid haircut doesn't help). But Wahlberg's charm and ferocity belongs in a better movie.

In the tradition of poetic, barely-civilized barbarians such as Cagney, Mitchum, McQueen and Connery, Wahlberg is one of those actors who's just as rugged behind the camera as he is in front of it. So what this means is he's able to invest his Vince Papale character with a solid bedrock of strength and integrity that a fraud like Tom Cruise can't. When Wahlberg walks into the Philadelphia Eagles' locker room for the first time, you know his balls are big enough to do it.